BMJ

The UK’s statistics watchdog has warned NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care over their claims about the benefits of Palantir’s federated data platform (FDP).1The Office for Statistical Regulation (OSR) examined how NHSE was using statistics to support claims about the success of the FDP, after several members of the public contacted the watchdog to express concern about how data were being presented.It identified that statistical teams at NHS England did not clear the FDP statistical data for public use before it was published. The watchdog recommended that these statistical teams should have a bigger role in overseeing claims made about the benefits of the platform.It also advised NHSE and ministers that all communications about Palantir’s software that include before-and-after data comparisons must be “clearly and appropriately labelled” and that any figures cited about its effectiveness “are communicated in a clear, accurate manner.”Members of the public expressed...

Thick smoke from Canadian wildfires has blanketed Toronto, Detroit, Minneapolis, Chicago, New York, and Washington, DC, in July. At points, Detroit, Toronto, and other North American cities ranked among the worst in the world for air quality.1In several cities, monitors recorded fine particle pollution at or above levels the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) classifies as “hazardous” on its air quality index.2 EPA’s updated particulate matter of 2.5 μm diameter or smaller (PM2.5) breakpoints put the hazardous category at 225.5 µg/m3 and above. During July, Reuters reported hazardous readings in Minneapolis, Milwaukee, and Toronto, while state and local monitors recorded PM2.5 concentrations above 600 µg/m3 in parts of Minnesota and Wisconsin.3Some US politicians took to social media, blaming Canada as summer activities were curtailed and residents were warned to stay indoors. And in a reversal, wildfires in the US west are now sending smoke north across the border into British...

NHS England’s announcement of an accelerated rollout of AI1 promises a beguiling future of shorter waiting times and better care for millions of patients. With a £10bn investment over three years, this is a major programme intended to deliver around half of the commitments in the 10 year plan and to generate £41bn in total benefits. Much of the gain is expected to be delivered through a new AI triage tool on the NHS app and through AI tools based on ambient voice technology.When taxpayers’ money is committed on this scale, decisions should be made transparently and based on evidence. For new medicines, we have machinery to do exactly that: regulatory approval, health technology assessment through the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the expectation of randomised trial evidence before widespread adoption, and a clear separation of private and public interests. For digital technology and AI, the evidential...

An expensive and recently banned neck operation for Alzheimer’s disease spread rapidly through China and is now being tested in the US and other countries, despite a lack of randomised evidence to demonstrate its efficacy.Qingping Xie, a microsurgeon and president at Hangzhou Qiushi Hospital in the city of Hangzhou, China, performed the first ever deep cervical lymphatic-venous anastomosis (dcLVA) on a patient with Alzheimer’s disease six years ago after receiving ethical approval from his hospital for the highly experimental procedure. The procedure became popular1 in China and was featured in articles published in Science in 20252 and in Nature in 2026.3But the rapid expansion of the procedure ignited criticism about its lack of standardisation, high price, and potential complications,4 as well as the ethics5 of performing experimental surgery on such vulnerable patients. It was banned6 by Chinese authorities in July 2025 because of a lack of robust clinical evidence to...

Medical students face official accusations of “unprofessionalism” to manage dissent or in retaliation for providing feedback about their education, a report warns.Students shared how they had been reported as being unprofessional for going home while sick, while others faced similar sanctions for legitimate complaints about their placement.These experiences were detailed in a report by the BMA, with the union warning that the practice left students afraid to raise concerns, including on patient safety, as doing so could harm their future careers.1This increasingly “punitive” and inconsistent enforcement of professionalism standards in UK medical schools is having a silencing effect across medical education and damaging trust in university leadership, the BMA warned.The report drew on survey data from 2573 UK medical students and data gathered from freedom of information (FoI) requests to medical schools.Nearly half (45%) of the students surveyed said they would feel uncomfortable raising concerns within their medical school, while...

The Edinburgh Medical School, the first in the English-speaking world, was founded 300 years ago. Its prehistory included the establishment of several important institutions:a College of Surgeons in 1505;the University of Edinburgh in 1582;a physic garden in 1670;a College of Physicians in 1680;In the 1680s the Edinburgh physicians began work on the Pharmacopoeia Edinburgensis, which was finally published in 1699, and from 1685 onwards many university professorial appointments were made in subjects such as physic, anatomy, chemistry, and the institutes and practice of medicine. Although not associated with chairs in the first instance, materia medica and botany were also being taught. Then, in 1726, following a petition presented to the Edinburgh Town Council by four physicians, a Faculty of Medicine was established. This was followed three years later by the foundation of a teaching hospital, completing all the requirements for a fully functioning medical school. The school was successful in...