Firm says results of research create ‘path to medical superintelligence’ but plays down job implications

Microsoft has revealed details of an artificial intelligence system that performs better than human doctors at complex health diagnoses, creating a “path to medical superintelligence”.

The company’s AI unit, which is led by the British tech pioneer Mustafa Suleyman, has developed a system that imitates a panel of expert physicians tackling “diagnostically complex and intellectually demanding” cases.

We can’t fix this crisis with vouchers, loyalty cards or supermarket displays. Either prices have to come down or incomes have to go up

The government’s policy on obesity, announced on Sunday, sounds as though it’s tough on the supermarkets: they really must do better on the health front, ministers say. Put the fruit nearer the doors (where it is already), make sure loyalty cards reward good choices. Calorie for calorie, a basket of healthy food costs more than twice as much as a basket of less healthy food, according to a report by the Food Foundation.

That statistic sounds stark until you engage your brain. Processed food is cheap because that is the “process”: the relentless prioritising of the profit margin over every other consideration, such as nutritional value. What else are you going to use all that big, capitalist brain power for? Making food more colourful?

I think it’s my way of avoiding my feelings – and that whatever they are, I’d be better off facing up to them

I recently found myself fantasising about buying a hairbrush that costs more than £100. It is a very beautiful hairbrush: it comes in a choice of seductive colours and it is fashioned from the keratin-rich fibres of south-east Asian boar and from biodegradable cellulose acetate (entirely free of petrochemicals). It was advertised to me on social media and I later sought it out, Googling it again and again, admiring photos of it from different angles and imagining the reassuring weight of its handle in my hand. If ever there were a hairbrush that could help me build a better life, I thought, this surely would be it.

How disturbingly close I came to buying this hairbrush I really cannot say. However, I can tell you when I knew that it was never going to happen. It was just now, when I realised with shock, after months of Googling and ogling, that I don’t use a hairbrush. I haven’t used one in close to 25 years – not since I was old enough to understand that my hair is curly and terrible frizzy things happen when I brush it. I use a wide-toothed comb once a day in the shower.

People looking after loved ones struggle to be heard by health professionals. Yet without us, the system would collapse

It’s autumn 2024 and I’m talking to an A&E doctor. We’re on the refreshment break at a conference about care. He tells me that he and his colleagues keep their NHS lanyards visible when they take loved ones to medical appointments. It means the doctors listen to them. It’s understandable; they’re peers with shared training and expertise. But it’s also infuriating because I know Mary’s story and many more like it.

Mary is 58, and lives in Wales with her husband and their adult son. As a result of epilepsy in infancy, her son has global developmental delay. Practically, this means that he is non-mobile, non-verbal and takes food through a tube to his stomach. I worked with Mary and 15 other unpaid carers last year, supporting them to keep weekly diaries and interviewing them, resulting in a research report.

Emily Kenway is a social-policy doctoral researcher at the University of Edinburgh and author of Who Cares: the Hidden Crisis of Caregiving and How We Solve It

Report finds more than a third have considered leaving their job due to the physical and emotional strain

People undergoing fertility treatment should have the legal right to take time off for their appointments, according to research that finds over a third have considered leaving their job due to the physical and emotional strain.

The campaign group Fertility Matters At Work is calling for IVF to be recategorised as a medical procedure, rather than an elective treatment equivalent to cosmetic surgery, in guidance for employers under the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) code of practice.

A weak grip goes hand in hand with higher risk of heart attack and stroke, and is linked to everything from diabetes and obesity to muscle loss. Here’s what to do about it

Anyone who has ever dropped their phone in the toilet – and isn’t that all of us? – knows something about the importance of a good strong grip. We come into the world ready to grasp anything placed in our hands, and if we are lucky we leave it the same way. In between, grip lets us cling to our parents, hold our lovers, rock our babies. The morning I wrote this, before I was even dressed, it enabled me to strap on my watch, lock the kids out of the bathroom, wash my hands, insert my contact lenses, strip, shower, brush my teeth, take my medicine and check my phone. A few hours later, as I hung upside down on some gymnastics rings, it stopped me slipping off and cracking my head on the floor.

But you know what? This just scratches the surface. Not only does grip help you work, play and pull your trousers on in the morning; it offers an immediate insight into your health. To put it bluntly, the weaker your grip, the more likely you are to die early.

I was told my husband would never talk again, while physiotherapy was dismissed entirely. My son was failed in similar ways, but for the brilliance of some medical staff who refuse to believe a stroke is the end

By Sheila Hale. Read by Phyllida Nash

Patient safety measure is part of 10-year plan to tackle poor standards in mental health and maternity services

The NHS is to become the first health system in the world to use AI to analyse hospital databases and catch potential safety scandals early, the government has said.

The Department of Health and Social Care said the technology will provide an early warning system which could detect patterns or trends and trigger urgent inspections. The scheme is part of the 10-year plan for the NHS that is due to be published by Wes Streeting this week.

As poverty deepens across Britain, the Guardian visited some of the hardest-hit places where leaders are aiming to shift healthcare from hospitals to communities

• Britain’s ‘medieval’ health inequality is devastating NHS, experts say

The same 11 young women turn up around the clock at the emergency ward of Furness general hospital in Cumbria. The group are well known to staff, other services – and each other. Aged between 19 and 35, they have all led troubled lives. Some grew up in care, most need mental health support. All have fallen through society’s cracks and now gamble with their lives for a safe place to sleep.

They know where to look to find the precise amount of medication to take for a non-lethal overdose, guaranteeing them an overnight stay in hospital. Some resort to swallowing household objects to secure a bed for the night.

Exclusive: Health service estimated to be spending £50bn a year on effects of deprivation and child poverty

• Britain in 2025: sick man of Europe battling untreated illness crisis

• Downing St has a radical change in mind for the NHS: shifting its focus from treatment to prevention

Britain’s “medieval” levels of health inequality are having a “devastating” effect on the NHS, experts have warned, with the health service estimated to be spending as much as £50bn a year on the effects of deprivation.

Rising rates of child poverty have led to a growing burden on hospitals, with the knock-on cost to the NHS comparable to the annual defence budget.

Despite the evidence health prevention works, successive governments have done little in this area until now

In Lancaster the community nurse Lizzie Holmes knocks on doors to talk to people who are unwell but reluctant to accept NHS help. In Blackpool, “community connectors” help low-income families get their children into healthy habits early in life. Both do necessary, vital, proactive work known as health prevention – stopping illness occurring in the first place and spotting it early when it does. The idea is that this will create a virtuous circle of a healthier population and thus less need for NHS care.

But while the initiatives described in a Guardian investigation are imaginative and effective, they are also atypical of the way the NHS works. Over recent decades governments of different political colours have talked about turning the NHS from a service primarily focused on treating illness to one that does far more to prevent disease in the first place. A number of expert reports over those years have urged ministers to make exactly that transformational change. It has never happened.

Dr Melanie Henwood writes that it is a flawed model; a social worker supports cutting Pips; plus letters from Jean Betteridge and an anonymous correspondent

As predicted (Starmer offers ‘massive concessions’ on welfare bill to Labour rebels, 26 June), an attempt has been made to salvage the welfare bill. Discontented MPs and disabled people alike will welcome the assurance that people currently receiving personal independence payments (Pip) or the health element of universal credit will be protected from changes. But the episode is damaging, has caused thousands of disabled people needless worry, and may come to be seen as pivotal in Keir Starmer’s tenure.

There is something deeply invidious about having two classes of benefit recipients – the protected current recipients, and those making future claims. At the same time, it is clear that the benefits system does need reform and, in particular, needs to support people into work rather than taking a punitive and brutal approach to cost saving.

The NHS needs to provide better understanding and support for people with the condition, says one reader

Thank you for publishing the article about polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) by Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff (I was diagnosed with PCOS – and was soon drowning in misinformation, 22 June). It resonated with my experience of diagnosis and frustration at the complete lack of support. I was first tested in my teens and told my blood test was normal. I was retested at 34 when I went to my GP about weight gain and struggling with exhaustion. When I was confirmed to have PCOS I was warned about the health issues, and told the best thing I could do was lose weight, even though this would be very difficult, and to come back when I was struggling to conceive.

Charlie is right: the amount of time and energy I had to put in to try to understand how to be healthy has been a huge drain. Especially sifting through the masses of misinformation. It took me two years and a lot of hard work to understand a diet and exercise plan that worked for me. It’s been difficult and lonely trying to navigate this on my own.

RFK Jr has direct control, but Senate testimony in May that someone else is running the agency has created confusion

Who is in charge at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)? The answer is more complicated than it may seem.

With no confirmed or acting CDC director, Robert F Kennedy Jr has direct control over the agency, allowing him to sign off – or not – on vaccine recommendations, according to legal experts.

Exclusive: Doctors say clean air zones need expanding, after 45,458 visits in first half of this year – up from 31,376 last year

The number of patients being treated by GPs for asthma attacks has increased by 45% in a year, prompting calls for urgent action to tackle toxic levels of air pollution.

There were 45,458 presentations to family doctors in England between January and June this year, according to data from the Royal College of General Practitioners research and surveillance centre. Across the same period in 2024, there were 31,376 cases.