Automating routine health care tasks through robotics takes another decisive step forward - University of Waterloo

IntroductionThe digitization of healthcare has generated massive repositories of electronic health records (EHRs) and an exponentially growing body of scientific literature1,2. While these resources hold substantial promise for precision medicine and clinical research, transforming high-dimensional, heterogeneous clinical data into actionable insights remains a persistent challenge: EHR analysis is constrained by data-quality variation, documentation artifacts, and methodological validity risks3,4,5,6,7. Traditionally, this process relies on human experts, making it labor-intensive, difficult to scale, and sensitive to analyst variability. Recent Large Language Models (LLMs) and LLM-driven agentic systems have demonstrated the potential to automate parts of this workflow by orchestrating code generation, tool usage, and retrieval over biomedical resources8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15. Extending these capabilities to EHR analysis requires end-to-end workflow orchestration, spanning cohort definition, feature construction, modeling, visualization, and reporting to turn heterogeneous patient records into reproducible analytical outputs.

Spleen tissue from a mouse without PHF19 (left) and a mouse with normal PHF19 function (right). Dense clusters of immune cells sit within blood-rich regions in pink. Without PHF19, cells are altered in their differentiation process. Image credit: Gianni Gamarra/Centro de Regulación Genómica Experiments with mice and patient data reveal new genes that can predict acute myeloid leukaemia outcome

Children who eat more ultra-processed foods (UPFs) show stronger responses in the brain's reward network when viewing images of appetizing foods-and these brain responses are linked to increases in body fat one year later. The findings, just published in JAMA Network Open, suggest that the brain may become more sensitive to food cues when children consume more UPFs. UPFs are manufactured food products-such as breakfast cereals, packaged bread and instant soups-that are designed to be highly palatable, convenient and shelf-stable. They often contain artificial sweeteners, colors and other ingredients that people do not typically use when cooking at home. On average, U. S. children get about 67% of their daily calories from UPFs.

Hiroshima University researchers investigated the effects of hydrogen supplementation on sleep quality in healthy human volunteers. While hydrogen supplementation had no significant effect compared to a placebo, individuals in the hydrogen-supplementation group reporting better sleep quality were discovered to have a lower abundance of hydrogen producing bacteria in their gut microbiome. A Hiroshima University-led randomized, double-blind clinical trial found that hydrogen supplementation did not significantly improve sleep quality compared to a placebo; however, exploratory analyses suggest that differences in the abundance of hydrogen-producing gut bacteria may be associated with individual differences in sleep-related responses.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced the beginning of the first clinical trial of an Ebola vaccine in the outbreak that started in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). WHO’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said in a social media post on Friday that participants in the trial were vaccinated with the Ervebo vaccine in Bunia, the capital of the DRC’s northeastern Ituri province, which is the epicentre of the Ebola outbreak. Recommended Stories list of 3 itemslist 1 of 3Kenya announces second Ebola death, says ‘no evidence’ of community spreadlist 2 of 3Nigeria’s first Ebola case matches DR Congo strain, health officials saylist 3 of 3WHO warns ‘more complex’ Ebola outbreak now present in 3 African countriesend of listErvebo, a vaccine approved for use against the more common Zaire strain of Ebola, will be put through a full-scale human trial to see if it offers any cross-protection against the Bundibugyo species of Ebola that is behind the epidemic. “This trial will help us understand whether any of the vaccine candidates designed for Bundibugyo virus work,” the WHO chief said on X.