❤️ Health Tech
Health Tech, or digital health, helps us understand and take control of our own health. But we also cover more traditional health news like medicines, vaccines and medical procedures.
📉 Diarrhea-related deaths among children reduced by 72 percent in 25 years
Deaths from diarrhea among children under five have dropped from 3.1 million annually in 1997 to 340,000 today. Rotavirus vaccines that cost $200 per dose in the 2000s now cost about one dollar. Since 1990, 2.6 billion people have gained access to safe drinking water.
🩺 AI system diagnoses patients four times better than experienced doctors
The AI tool correctly diagnosed 85.5 percent of cases compared to doctors' 20 percent. The system ordered fewer scans and tests to reach the correct diagnosis than human doctors.
🧬 New AI model predicts cellular responses to drugs and treatments
Arc releases State, a virtual cell model trained on data from nearly 170 million cells to predict how different cell types react to drugs and genetic perturbations.
🩸 Previously deadly blood cancer completely disappears in one-third of patients
One-third of 97 patients with incurable blood cancer became tumor-free after immunotherapy and remain healthy after five years. The treatment uses the patient's own white blood cells that are modified to attack the cancer. The cost is much lower than traditional medications.
🩺 AI diagnose better than doctors in test
The model performed better than hundreds of doctors in five different experiments testing medical reasoning. In an emergency room study, AI outperformed both experienced doctors and previous AI versions in diagnostics with limited information.
🧬 Baby saved by the world’s first personalized CRISPR treatment
A nine and a half month old boy received the world's first custom gene editing treatment for his rare genetic disease CPS1 deficiency. The treatment fixed the boy's specific mutation and he can now eat normal amounts of protein without getting dangerous ammonia levels in his blood.
💉 Study for world's first tuberculosis vaccine in 100 years reaches recruitment target earlier than expected
The clinical trial of potentially first new tuberculosis vaccine in a century has successfully recruited all 20,000 participants several months earlier than planned. The vaccine showed 50% effectiveness in earlier phase 2 studies, which could reduce millions of tuberculosis cases globally.
📉 Diabetes-related deaths in the US drop to lowest levels in years
New preliminary figures from the CDC show that diabetes-related deaths in the US have decreased to 26.4 deaths per 100,000 people according to data from the third quarter of 2024. This decrease reverses the concerning increase observed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
🦟 New medication kills mosquitoes through the blood they suck
A medication approved for rare genetic diseases, proves to kill malaria-carrying mosquitoes when they suck blood from people who have taken the medicine. The mosquitoes die within 24 hours after sucking blood containing nitisinone, which is faster than with previously tested medications.