Tag: United Kingdom

Posted on

Digital Pathology and the NHS: Overcoming Barriers to a More Connected Future

As demand on National Health Service (NHS) U.K. pathology services continues to rise, the shift toward digital pathology has never been more critical. While the NHS 10 Year Plan identifies it as one of the system’s most transformative enablers, digital pathology adoption remains uneven. Damian Doherty, Editor in Chief of Inside Precision Medicine, sat down with Olga Colgan, PhD, strategic marketing director at Leica Biosystems, and Darren Treanor, MB BCh, PhD, consultant histopathologist at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, to explore the pressures facing today’s pathology departments, the transformative potential of digital workflows, and how collaborative partnerships are helping accelerate progress and unlock the full value of digital diagnostics.

 

Q: The NHS 10 Year Health Plan identifies digital pathology as one of three fundamental shifts, yet adoption remains limited. What are the key barriers?

Olga Colgan
Olga Colgan, PhD

Olga Colgan: Many pathology departments today are already stretched thin by managing growing workloads, which can make it difficult to pause and do a thorough workflow examination and consider process improvements. Transitioning to digital pathology requires an investment and openness to change. For decades, pathology has been optimized for glass slide review under a microscope, so moving to digital is not just a technology upgrade, but a cultural shift for laboratory staff and clinicians who value the familiarity and comfort of traditional methods.

Proper capital allocation and investment are critical to unlock the benefits of digital pathology. For example, information technology (IT) infrastructure must be capable of supporting high-resolution imaging, secure storage, and rapid sharing of thousands of slides. Regulatory needs must also be considered, as each lab must validate digital workflows to ensure appropriate compliance.

While these upfront hurdles can seem daunting, they lead to significant long-term gains. Digital workflows enable faster slide sharing, improve access to subspecialists, and ultimately improve turnaround times—delivering real benefits for both laboratory teams and patients eagerly waiting for critical results.

 

Q: What are the key benefits of digital pathology that make it such a crucial step for modernizing NHS pathology services—particularly in terms of workflow efficiency, diagnostic accuracy, and collaborative decision-making?

Colgan: Digital pathology is the quintessential modernization of a pathology laboratory, driving efficiencies in workflows, accuracy, and collaboration. Centralized digital storage provides instant access to prior cases and supports predictive analytics. Eliminating physical slides from the workflow after scanning reduces breakage risks and concerns, misidentification risks, along with space and storage needs.

Beyond efficiency gains, digital pathology unleashes the power of remote collaboration. The ability to share whole-slide images instantly means pathologists can quickly leverage remote expertise within their network, or obtain second opinions in minutes rather than days, accelerating diagnostic confidence and treatment decisions. It also extends expertise beyond geographic boundaries, removing the “postcode-lottery” and providing a basis for equity in pathology diagnostics. This enables rural or underserved regions to access pathologists without the delays, costs, and concerns of physical slide transport. This connectivity transforms pathology into a truly networked resource, ensuring that expertise is available whenever and wherever it’s needed, even after hours.

Further, although in the early stages of routine usage, artificial intelligence (AI) models can add another layer of support by bringing greater quantification and reproducibility to slide analysis, highlighting subtle patterns or abnormalities that may be difficult to identify by eye. Effectively, AI can act as a second set of eyes to further build diagnostic confidence and augment—rather than replace—pathologist review.

 

Q: How are companies like Leica Biosystems supporting NHS trusts in overcoming digital pathology adoption challenges?

Colgan: It starts with listening. We understand that every laboratory and every pathology department has unique workflows, bottlenecks, and priorities, so our first step is a conversation and analysis to identify those needs and design a tailored roadmap for transformation. This isn’t just about technology; it’s about creating solutions that make the pathology workloads more sustainable, especially at a time when the profession faces significant workforce shortages.

Leica Biosystems partners with labs to deliver systems that meet their demands today, while anticipating future growth and scalability. A great example is Leeds Teaching Hospital and the National Pathology Imaging Co-operative. Combined, they make up the largest national integrated digital pathology network in Europe for routine diagnostics—a milestone that demonstrates what’s possible when technology and collaboration come together. The Leeds Guide to Digital Pathology, volume one and volume two, is packed with practical tips and pragmatic approaches to support successful digital pathology adoption.

 

Q: What influenced Leeds Teaching Hospital to adopt digital pathology, and what transformation have you experienced?

Darren Treanor
Darren Treanor, MB BCh, PhD

Darren Treanor: We’ve been involved with digital pathology since the very early days of the technology, and it has become the essential foundation of our teaching and research work at the University of Leeds. We had taken a cautious approach to clinical adoption until we were convinced that the technology was ready—both in terms of clinical safety and technical readiness—and we could ensure that it worked and was safe.

We decided that the threshold for adoption for clinical use was reached in 2015, when we established that the clinical safety was acceptable and that the scanners and viewing software were fit for purpose and would not slow us down. Working in partnership with Leica Biosystems, we adopted a phased approach to 100% digital scanning, starting with a “meaningful pilot” with our four breast pathology colleagues. This group was the most pro-digital in the department and, being located in a separate building, had experienced frustrating delays in the delivery of glass slides between the main lab and their offices. They actively pursued us to “go digital.” The pilot with them was critical for us in planning the laboratory and clinical workflow reconfigurations needed to go digital and, importantly, developing a verification and validation process that allowed us to transition from glass to digital slides while maintaining safety. This process became the foundation of the U.K. Royal College of Pathologists guidelines for digital pathology, which have been adopted in many other countries as well.

We then looked toward the further summit of “100% digital” and took a phased approach, starting with immunohistochemistry (IHC). As a separate part of the lab, this activity could be separately digitized. With digital review of IHC being a lower-risk activity clinically, it allowed us to introduce the rest of our over 40 pathology consultants to the idea of diagnosis on a digital image. Once that was completed, we moved in one final big step to 100% digital scanning, reaching that milestone on a summer’s day in 2018.

 

Q: What lessons can other NHS trusts learn from your digital transformation journey, and what should be considered as they examine their current workflows?

Treanor: Because of our academic background and partnership with Leica Biosystems, we were very keen to share our experiences of going digital and how to do it. Too many deployments would talk of the great success in using whole-slide imaging, but gloss over the challenges and effort involved in getting there.

We wrote the Leeds guides to provide really simple general-purpose assistance to other labs that are new to digital pathology and didn’t have the benefit of in-house expertise yet.

Looking back, being early adopters, we had the unique challenge of being one of the first centers to go fully digital and pave the way at a time when scanners, displays, and software were just good enough, and the combined global experience of digital pathology was low. We have run many workshops to share our experiences, and it has been interesting to see how the field has evolved in recent times and how much easier it is now to go digital. There are far fewer “unknowns” when going digital now, and modern scanners and workflows are significantly better. For example, our current setup has a very smooth transition from H&E [hematoxylin and eosin] stainer to scanner, which saves a lot of time in the lab and removes a major obstacle to lab operation that we had to work around in the early years. In our early workshops, a deployment was often a multi-year project with a lot of uncertainty and need for a lot of preparatory work; nowadays, labs are much more digital-ready, the timelines are much shorter, and success rates are much higher!

The post Digital Pathology and the NHS: Overcoming Barriers to a More Connected Future appeared first on Inside Precision Medicine.

Posted on

The Download: whole-body rejuvenation drugs and five things to know about AI

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

David Sinclair plans to test whole-body rejuvenation drugs in the XPrize competition

The outspoken longevity scientist David Sinclair has predicted that, one day, you’ll go to the doctor and get a prescription that will make you 10 years younger. MIT Technology Review has learned of his latest step toward this: human tests of a “reprogramming” drug.

Sinclair, a biologist at Harvard Medical School, plans to launch the tests in a $101 million competition organized by the XPrize Foundation. The winners will “restore” a person to an earlier apparent age, as measured by improvements in immune, cognitive, and muscle function.

The grand prize goes to any team able to show a 10-year (or greater) relative improvement after one year of treatment. 

Sinclair says he plans to give an oral drug mixture to volunteers, in a bid to seek “evidence for age restoration in humans.” Find out how he hopes to reverse ageing through chemical reprogramming.

—Antonio Regalado

Five things you need to know about AI

—Will Douglas Heaven

At SXSW London last week, I gave a talk called “Five things you need to know about AI,” in which I shared what I think are the biggest themes in AI right now.

I pulled a few things from our first AI10 list, an annual guide to the top trends in this buzzy world, but I also veered off on several tangents. In my half-hour slot, I tried to cover the key talking points that I think help to make sense of what’s going on in tech—and thus the economy—today.  

Five key thoughts emerged: AI is everywhere all at once, it’s getting scary, a backlash is growing, it’s becoming a big deal for science—and I didn’t even need to show up at the talk. Read the full story for all the details.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 OpenAI has confidentially filed for a US IPO
The listing could come as early as September. (Reuters $)
+ OpenAI is targeting a valuation of up to $1 trillion. (Financial Times $)
+ The IPO will test investor appetite for AI companies. (WSJ $)
+ The move follows IPO filings from Anthropic and SpaceX. (CNN)

2 The US claims BYD, Baidu, Alibaba, and others are aiding China’s military
The Pentagon added them to a list of military-linked companies. (WSJ $)
+ The designations limit their operations in the US. (BBC)
+ The new additions also include humanoid firm Unitree. (TechCrunch)
+ The Pentagon is adapting to China’s tech rise. (MIT Technology Review)

3 Apple’s long-awaited AI overhaul of Siri is finally here
“Siri AI” promises to be a more conversational assistant. (NYT $)
+ It includes a standalone app and screen-reading features. (Reuters $)
+ And arrives after two years of repeated delays. (Axios)

4 The White House and Congress are working to limit state AI laws
A new deal would curb state rules for federal legislation. (Axios)
+ AI regulation has divided US politicians. (MIT Technology Review)

5  Meta is launching a “workforce academy” for building data centers
The five-week program is free of charge and guarantees a job. (WSJ $)
+ It arrives shortly after Meta laid off 8,000 employees. (NPR)

6 Taiwan is mulling curbs on AI chip exports to China
The new controls would further align with US restrictions. (Bloomberg $)
+ Future AI chips could be built on glass. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Meta has quietly removed face-recognition code from its smart glasses app
The code identified by investigators has disappeared. (Wired $)

8 Humanoid robots are edging towards the battlefield
American and Chinese militaries are pursuing the tech. (BBC)

9 The world’s first wind-powered underwater data center has launched
It uses less power and water than land-based equivalents. (Guardian)

10 You could get some benefits of sleep without having to nod off
If new brain stimulation works as well on humans as on mice, that is. (New Scientist $)

Quote of the day

“You’re on the train, but you know that there’s no destination.”

—Clara Shih, a former top AI executive at Salesforce and Meta, tells the New York Times that AI training can’t keep up with the field’s advances.

One More Thing

biomilq concept illo

ILLUSTRATIONS BY AMRITA MARINO


Inside the race to make human sex cells in the lab

An embryo forms when sperm meets egg. But what if we could start with other cells—if a blood sample or skin biopsy could be transformed into “artificial” sperm and eggs? What if those were all you needed to make a baby?

That’s the promise of a radical approach to reproduction. Scientists have already created artificial eggs and sperm from mouse cells and used them to create mouse pups. Artificial human sex cells are next.

The advances could herald the end of infertility, but they raise major scientific and ethical challenges. 

Read the full story on the new recipes for sperm and eggs.

—Jessica Hamzelou

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun, and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.)

+ These chefs turn Pop-Tarts into the desserts that inspired them.
+ A choir has beautifully transformed System of a Down’s “Chop Suey!”
+ Scientists finally traced crabs’ sideways walk in this fascinating study of evolution.
+ This nostalgic essay on the family computer is a touching throwback to early internet life.

Top image credit: Stephanie Arnett/MIT Technology Review | Getty Images

Please send Pop-Tarts to hi@technologyreview.com. 

You can follow me on LinkedIn. Thanks for reading!

—Thomas

Posted on

Cognitive and neuropsychological correlates of the attention training technique: a systematic review and evidence synthesis

IntroductionThe Attention Training Technique (ATT) is a brief metacognitive intervention recognised as a possibly efficacious standalone transdiagnostic treatment for emotional disorders. The cognitive and neuropsychological mechanisms underlying its clinical effects are of particular interest in understanding and developing the technique. The aim of the systematic review was to synthesise and evaluate the cognitive-attentional task performance and neurocognitive correlates of ATT in the context of theoretical mechanisms from which ATT is derived.MethodsFive electronic databases (PsycINFO, MEDLINE, PubMed, Web of Science and EMBASE) were searched from January 1990 to November 2025. Studies that used ATT as part of a metacognitive multi-component treatment package or combined with other therapy/technique(s) were excluded. Sample inclusion was diverse to capture effects on non-clinical and clinical individuals and across age groups for potential sub-group analyses.ResultsIn total, 20 studies with 1, 230 participants met the inclusion criteria. Four studies included clinical samples, four studies included non-clinical participants, two studies used experimental induction of pain or mind wandering, and 10 used healthy samples of which two used school children. Study quality varied from strong to weak with the majority receiving ‘moderate’ ratings. Across 14 cognitive-attentional tasks and three neural methodologies (EEG, fNIRS, fMRI), the review found small to large cognitive and neural effects associated with ATT. Nine cognitive tasks showed significant ATT-dependent effects in at least one study, with the most consistency shown on the emotional dot-probe. Neural findings across all methodologies converged, suggesting that ATT modulates cognitive control, frontoparietal, dorsal attention networks and reduces default mode network connectivity.DiscussionInterpretation and synthesis of findings based on the S-REF model are consistent with cognitive and neural effects involving reduced threat monitoring, improved executive control, and enhanced disengagement from self-referential processing; central theoretical mechanisms and design parameters of ATT. Where inconsistencies across study effects emerged, they may be due to heterogeneity in cognitive task and measurement factors and ATT protocol deviations. Future research on individual differences in neurocognitive effects associated with ATT across clinical and sub-clinical populations is needed. Studies must safeguard fidelity and adherence to the ATT protocol and improve reporting of these important factors.Systematic review registrationhttps://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/, identifier CRD42024483053.
Posted on

Genome Wide Analysis Broadens Genetic Knowledge of Anxiety

A large European meta-analysis led by King’s College London has revealed 39 new areas of the genome linked to symptoms of anxiety and provided new estimates of heritability of this common condition.

Writing in Nature Human Behaviour, the researchers explain they found 80 variants linked to anxiety in 74 specific areas of the genome, but 35 were already known to be linked to the disorder from previous research.

“These correlations highlight the interconnection between mental and physical health,” said Brittany Mitchell, PhD, a senior researcher at the QIMR Berghofer medical research institute and co-first author on the study in a press statement.

“Importantly, while some shared genetic variants may increase risk for both a physical health condition and more severe anxiety symptoms, it’s also true that living with chronic pain or illness can contribute to anxiety symptoms. Our findings don’t reveal causation or the direction of effect, but they do open up important questions for future research.”

Anxiety disorders are very common mental health conditions across the globe with large variations in severity from mild to debilitating. Previous research has attempted to assess the genetic heritability of anxiety but estimates of how heritable this condition is vary widely.

In this study, genetic data from 14 cohorts of people with generalized anxiety symptoms assessed via self-report questionnaires between 2007 and 2023 was combined to carry out a large meta-analysis of 693,869 people. Most of the cohorts were largely made up of people of European ancestry, for example, the UK Biobank, and mostly came from Europe or North America.

In addition to finding the new variants, the team also created a polygenic risk score for anxiety aggregating genome-wide SNP effects. Overall, the estimated SNP-based heritability was around 6% and the team estimated that about 1-3% of variance in anxiety symptom severity could be attributed to genetics according to the polygenic risk score.

Notably the research also highlighted some links between the genetics of anxiety and other conditions like irritable bowel syndrome, coronary artery disease, and migraine.

“Given the high and rising rates of anxiety, especially in young adults, it is more important than ever to improve our ability to identify and understand sources of risk,” write the authors.

“Despite its public health impact, progress in anxiety genetics lags behind other major mental health conditions. We hope our findings encourage genome-wide investigations leveraging existing but potentially underutilized anxiety severity data in genotyped cohorts, accelerating our progress in understanding the genetic architecture of anxiety.”

The post Genome Wide Analysis Broadens Genetic Knowledge of Anxiety appeared first on Inside Precision Medicine.

Posted on

Five things you need to know about AI

At SXSW London last week I gave a talk called “Five things you need to know about AI,” in which I shared what I think are the biggest themes in AI right now.

I pulled a few things from our first AI10 list, an annual guide to the most important trends in this buzzy world, but I also veered off on a number of tangents. In my half-hour slot, I tried to cover the key talking points that I think help to make sense of what’s going on in tech—and thus the economy—today.  

(I gave a talk with the same title at SXSW London last year with five different things you needed to know. A lot has happened since then!)

So: This is how I’m thinking about AI midway through 2026. Let me know if you would pick different points!

1. Strictly speaking, I didn’t need to show up to give this talk.

Tongue in cheek? Maybe. But generative AI tools have already become mundane, used by millions to automate everyday office tasks (including producing and delivering talks). It’s no surprise that one of the biggest questions out there right now is what this all means for jobs. People are confused and scared.

The frustrating answer is that despite the hype coming from the top about the potential for AI to join the workforce soon—and viral social media posts yelling that something big is happening—there is almost no data to say either way what kind of effect this technology will have on employment and the economy overall. That’s not to say it won’t have an impact, even a huge one, but it’s just too soon to tell.

In theory, teams of agents working together toward common goals could become assembly lines for white-collar work, doing to offices this century what Henry Ford’s innovations did to factories in the 20th century.

In theory. Because in order to know what will happen to jobs, we need to know what will happen inside the companies that create those jobs. But most companies are still figuring that out.

 2. AI is getting scary (for real this time).

There have been scary stories about AI for years—claims that it will kill us all or bring about the end of civilization. There’s still a loud crowd of doomers, but those scenarios remain dystopian science fiction.

What’s happened instead is that many of the worst near-term, real-world fears have come true.

Take deepfakes, AI-generated images or videos of people doing things they didn’t actually do. Deepfakes have been used to incite violence, swing votes, and sow distrust. Trump’s White House is among those creating and publishing fake images.

Many deepfakes are also used to abuse women and girls. One study found that 98% of deepfakes are pornographic and 99% involve women.

Another concern is the rise of dangerous and delusional relationships with chatbots. Many people turn to chatbots to seek private advice and to feel heard. But there are now multiple lawsuits against AI companies alleging that the technology encouraged or aided suicides and other forms of self-harm.

AI is also being used in warfare in new and worrying ways. LLMs are now giving advice, not just being used for analysis. One US defense official told my colleague James O’Donnell that you could now give a military chatbot a list of targets and ask which one to hit first. Anyone who uses AI knows that its output needs to be reviewed carefully. In fact-paced, high-stress active conflict, the risk that corners get cut is high.

3. A lot of people really hate AI.

I checked out an anti-AI protest in London earlier this year and found a very broad mix of complaints. Banners proclaiming the end times bounced along to chants of “Stop the slop! Stop the slop!” Protests are getting more organized and drawing larger crowds.

There’s pushback from fans of films and video games, who object to the use of generative AI in their favorite titles. In one notable case, the acclaimed 2025 game Clair Obscur was stripped of an award when the developers admitted to using AI in just one small, specific part of its production.

And there’s the data center backlash. The US has more than 5,400 data centers and counting. With the energy demands of AI growing, people are unhappy about the environmental impact and their rising electricity bills. Activists are managing to stall development in a number of places.

Regulation is becoming politically popular. Grassroots movements like QuitGPT have gained momentum. A small number have turned to violence; a few weeks ago somebody threw a Molotov cocktail at Sam Altman’s house. It’s not clear where all this leads. But the apocalyptic hype from tech leaders is not helping people stay calm.

4. AI for science is a very big deal.

It’s early days yet, but the potential for AI to help make a genuine and important scientific discovery is greater than ever.

Google DeepMind has developed Co-Scientist, a multipurpose tool that can help researchers dig up and compare previous results, generate hypotheses, and devise experiments to test them. OpenAI told me this year that its North Star is the goal of building a fully automated researcher by 2028.

Mathematicians are excited too. Fundamental math underpins many everyday technologies, from internet security to video streaming. The last few months have seen a string of claims that AI has cracked unsolved math problems. And software that can solve really hard math problems will be able—so the argument goes—to solve more general-purpose real-world problems too.

What are the downsides? Some scientists are warning that an overreliance on AI tools could narrow the scope of research because scientists may choose problems that are most suited to AI assistance. There are also concerns that AI-assisted research will lead to a flood of inaccurate or fake results: science slop.

5. AI is everywhere all at once.

So where does that leave us? There are a lot of exciting things, a lot of worrying things, and a lot of hot air. It can be exhausting to keep up, and yet it all feels inescapable. Some people will tell you we’re in a race to the top; some will tell you we’re in a race to the bottom. But it’s really not clear where we’re headed.

AI companies want us to march to their tune and buy into the propaganda about artificial general intelligence, whatever that means. They are selling a vision that feels inevitable, but it isn’t.

We’ve built a technology that can do humanlike things, and I think that makes it hard to get our heads around the fact that it is still just a technology.

Something is happening. Maybe even something comparable to the invention of electricity or the internet. But technologies like that take time to settle and bring lasting change.

Get ready for a marathon, not a sprint.

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here.

Posted on

Postnatal maternal mental health-related hospitalisation and its association with adverse child health and maltreatment outcomes: narrative review

BackgroundMaternal mental health conditions within the postnatal period can have long-lasting consequences on a child’s well-being. This study synthesises current evidence on the association between postnatal maternal mental health-related hospitalisation (MHrH) and adverse child health and maltreatment outcomes.MethodsWe conducted an inclusive search across multiple databases, including MEDLINE, PsycINFO, CINAHL, Scopus, Embase, Google Scholar, and the reference list of eligible papers. Studies that used standardised outcome measures were included. Study selection and data extraction were made using a standardised Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) tool. The quality of the studies was assessed using the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (NOS). Descriptive vote counting to map the direction of effects, alongside narrative thematic synthesis, was used to summarise the findings from the included studies.ResultsFour studies (n = 1,020,342) were included in the review. Three of these studies suggest a possible association between postnatal maternal MHrH and adverse child health outcomes (growth failure, respiratory and gastrointestinal infection) or maltreatment (sexual, physical, and emotional abuse). One study did not find a statistically significant association between postnatal maternal MHrH and infant growth.ConclusionThe available evidence suggests a possible association between postnatal maternal MHrH and adverse child health and maltreatment outcomes. However, given the small number of studies and methodological heterogeneity, these findings should be interpreted cautiously and highlight the need for further high-quality longitudinal research.Systematic Review Registrationhttps://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/, identifier CRD42023446155.