NHS will use AI in warning system to catch potential safety scandals early

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.The government acknowledged the concern surrounding standards of patient care after “a spate of scandals including in mental health and maternity services”.Last week a national investigation into NHS maternity and neonatal services was announced by Streeting

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

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

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

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.One senior NHS figure said they were seeing “medieval” levels of untreated illness in some of Britain’s poorest communities, including people attending A&E “with cancerous lumps bursting through their skin”.Another said hospitals were witnessing a “chilling” trend of vulnerable people, young and old, deliberately self-harming to secure an overnight stay. Concern has also been raised about rising rates of “Dickensian” illnesses, including scabies, rickets and scarlet fever

Downing Street’s radical plan for the NHS: shifting it from treatment to prevention

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

Cutting personal independent payments: potentially devastating or justified? | Letters

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

Living with polycystic ovary syndrome can be difficult and lonely | Letters

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