Ministers mull allowing private firms to make profit from NHS data in AI push

Ministers are considering allowing private companies to make profits from NHS data as part of a push to revolutionise the health service using artificial intelligence, government officials have indicated.Keir Starmer on Monday announced a push to open up the government to AI innovation, including allowing companies to use anonymised patient data to develop new treatments, drugs and diagnostic tools.With the prime minister and the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, under pressure over Britain’s economic outlook, Starmer said AI could bolster the country’s anaemic growth, as he put concerns over privacy, disinformation and discrimination to one side.“We are in a unique position in this country, because we’ve got the National Health Service, and the use of that data has already driven forward advances in medicine, and will continue to do so,” he told an audience in east London.“We have to see this as a huge opportunity that will impact on the lives of millions of people really profoundly

Michael King obituary

My father, Michael King, who has died aged 88, always wanted to be a doctor, following a childhood incident when he accidentally killed a squirrel with his catapult to which he attributed his lifelong commitment to surgery and medicine. He worked for three decades as a surgeon in Malawi.Michael was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, where his father, Leslie, was vicar of Holy Trinity, Jesmond; his mother, Rosina (nee Stanton), had worked in Liberty’s in London before her marriage. During the second world war the family were living in Anerly, south London, and Michael went to Dulwich College prep school followed by Hereford Cathedral school.After national service in Hong Kong, he achieved an exhibition to study medicine and then surgery at Cambridge University (St John’s College) and Guy’s hospital in London, while making a canoe, developing his own films and playing the violin

Is more outsourcing the remedy for NHS delays? | Letters

I cannot have been the only person staggered by the figure – £16bn – that the government is proposing to pay to the private sector in its attempts to reduce waiting lists for planned care (Private sector’s role in cutting NHS waiting lists in England to rise by 20%, 6 January).Your report and the response to the proposal from Keep Our NHS Public raise the issues that everyone should be concerned about, ie how the private sector proposes to staff their treatment facilities, and what the effects on an already demoralised and stretched NHS will be.Have Starmer, Streeting and their advisers not seen the figures that show significant reductions in people taking up university training places for nursing? Hardly surprising when they are landed with debts of tens of thousands. It is surely time to remedy this ludicrous situation and provide grants for the training of nurses and other medical skills. Set against the billions that government bungs to those corporates who voraciously digest any treatment category they can (mostly with staff who have gained experience and training through NHS resources), this would be a bargain, and put future NHS staff on a much more positive course

Labour MP Sarah Champion calls for grooming gangs inquiry

Sarah Champion, the Labour MP who has been a longtime campaigner on the sexual abuse of women and girls, has called for another national inquiry into grooming gangs, putting more pressure on Keir Starmer.The Rotherham MP said in a statement that while it was also important to swiftly implement the recommendations of the previous inquiry into the issue, led by Prof Alexis Jay, there was a need to examine the failures of those in authority.The prime minister has faced calls from the Conservatives and Reform UK, among others, to launch a fresh inquiry after the tech billionaire Elon Musk seized on the longstanding scandal earlier this month.Starmer, who condemned the “lies and misinformation” spread by Musk via messages on X, the social media platform he owns, has refused calls for another inquiry.Downing Street argues that while it does not definitively rule this out as an option, the consensus among victims and survivors, and among experts, including Jay, is that to do so would risk delaying action to crack down on the problem now

Lady Wilkins obituary

Rosalie Wilkins, Lady Wilkins, who has died aged 78, was the co-creator and presenter of the first regular television programme on disabled people’s lives in the UK. She was also a disability activist, documentary maker and Labour peer.Link, made with Richard Creasey (then programme controller for ATV), was the UK’s first TV programme both for and made by disabled people. Beginning in 1975 as a monthly programme in the Birmingham area, it moved to ITV and soon became a fortnightly programme broadcast nationwide. It gave a voice to the emerging disability movement, challenged contemporary attitudes to disability, and demonstrated good practice and innovative approaches to the full spectrum of disability

How Ryan Wellings made Kiena Dawes’ life a nightmare

Kiena Dawes’ final note was as heartbreaking as it was chilling. She talked of being strong and having dreams, of fighting hard, but losing after going through pain no one could imagine. She took her own life but squarely blamed one man for her death: “Ryan Wellings killed me,” she wrote.It was a message from beyond the grave, which on Monday led to Wellings being convicted for assault and prolonged domestic abuse, but cleared of manslaughter.The seven-week trial at Preston crown court has shone a light on what is a grim reality of domestic abuse for as many as one in four women in the UK