A New Generation of Startups Tackles The Youth Mental Health Crisis - Forbes

The opening session of AAO 2026 featured a keynote speech discussing how artificial intelligence (AI) will play a part in health care. “We are embarking on what is the greatest experiment in the history of medicine in trying to get this right,” Robert M. Wachter, MD, began his keynote address for the American Academy of Ophthalmology 2026 Annual Meeting on October 10, 2026. For Wachter, artificial intelligence (AI) represents a promising path forward for health care that should be encouraged. AI Can Provide Scalable Specialty Expertise in Health CareWachter emphasized that informed optimism is the way to approach AI in the future as the tools become more normal rather than novel. According to an NBC News poll, public sentiment toward AI in health care specifically is mostly positive, with 47% claiming that it would bring more good than harm compared with 30% who thought it would bring more harm than good.1 This could allow for more ease in introducing AI into health care than in other areas, as the pushback is not as strong in this area, said Wachter.

European Medical Journal news storyPeople living with HIV may experience subtle changes in heart muscle function even when conventional measures of cardiac performance remain normal, according to findings from a systematic review and meta-analysis. Researchers identified significantly impaired global longitudinal strain (GLS) among people with HIV compared with HIV-uninfected individuals, despite preserved left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) in both groups. The findings suggest that speckle-tracking echocardiography (STE) could provide additional information about early myocardial dysfunction in this population. Read the full news story here.

Among cancer patients, the high financial cost of cancer care is a prevalent problem. This financial burden is also associated with potentially harmful behavioral strategies that patients might use to cope with costs, such as delaying or forgoing treatment and skipping medications. Collectively, researchers refer to this impact as financial toxicity.