Background: AI is an increasingly prominent feature of contemporary health care, with medical AI systems beginning to support diagnostic and therapeutic processes in many clinical domains. Alongside the anticipated benefits of these technologies, their introduction also raises broader questions about how clinical work and professional roles may change. In particular, medical AI systems may affect physician autonomy, a key factor influencing the acceptance and long-term implementation of new medical technologies. Objective: The aim of this study was to develop and pretest a semistructured interview guide concerning the potential effects of medical AI systems on physician autonomy. Methods: The interview guide was theoretically grounded in a 7-component model of physician autonomy proposed by Schulz and Harrison. Semistructured qualitative interviews were conducted with a sample of 7 hospital physicians. Interview recordings were transcribed and analyzed using a hybrid inductive-deductive thematic approach: themes were first identified inductively from participant responses and subsequently mapped onto the 7-component model of physician autonomy proposed by Schulz and Harrison. Data were analyzed to assess both the potential effects of medical AI systems on physician autonomy and the methodological adequacy of the interview guide. Results: Most participants did not express strong concerns about losing clinical autonomy through the introduction of AI systems. However, several autonomy-related risks were identified, including potential deskilling, automation bias, limited system explainability, and increasing economic or cost-related pressures. Participants emphasized that AI should serve as a supportive tool rather than a substitute for physician judgment. All physicians agreed that AI systems should not replace clinicians as primary clinical decision-makers. Conclusions: Medical AI was largely viewed as compatible with physician autonomy; however, participants highlighted important risks that warrant attention in future research and system design. Our preliminary findings suggest that autonomy-related concerns extend beyond the direct loss of decision-making authority and include broader professional, cognitive, and organizational dimensions. However, our inductively identified themes and subthemes did not fully reflect all components of physician autonomy, indicating the need for further refinement of how to assess physician autonomy in qualitative research.
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HelloType1 Digital Education Platform for Individuals With Type 1 Diabetes in Southeast Asia: Data Analytics Study
Background: Type 1 diabetes remains an underrecognized and challenging condition across Southeast Asia, where many countries face limited health care infrastructure, shortages of trained health care professionals, inconsistent access to diabetes education, and a lack of culturally appropriate resources in local languages. These barriers contribute to delayed diagnosis, suboptimal self-management, high rates of diabetic ketoacidosis, and inequities in care. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Action4Diabetes, a nonprofit organization working with local health care professionals and diabetes associations across Southeast Asia, developed HelloType1, a multilingual digital educational platform designed to improve awareness, education, and access to credible type 1 diabetes information. The platform was launched sequentially in Cambodia in 2021, Vietnam and Thailand in 2022, and Malaysia in 2023 through formal memorandums of understanding with local partners. Objective: This study aimed to evaluate the reach, platform usage, and online engagement of the HelloType1 digital educational platform across Southeast Asia between 2021 and 2024. Methods: Website analytics from Google Analytics 4 and Meta Business Suite metrics were descriptively analyzed to assess digital reach and engagement across countries. Metrics were compared over time and by country to examine patterns of platform uptake and user engagement. Results: HelloType1 demonstrated substantial growth between 2021 and 2024. Total unique website users increased from 1178 in 2021 to 40,361 in 2024, representing a marked expansion in regional reach. Pageviews rose from 4644 in 2021 to 83,689 in 2024, suggesting increasing content use and user platform engagement. By 2024, most website visits originated from organic search engines. Platform use was predominantly mobile-based, particularly in Vietnam, Thailand, and Malaysia, with the strongest engagement among adults aged 25 to 54 years. Facebook followers increased from 940 to 4553, and average engagement rates rose between 2022 and 2024. Cambodia achieved the highest number of Facebook interactions, whereas Thailand demonstrated the highest engagement rate. Content-level analysis showed that practical self-management topics, including blood glucose monitoring, insulin treatment, nutrition and exercise, complications, and emotional support, generated high levels of reach and interaction. Conclusions: HelloType1 demonstrates strong growth, mobile-first use, search-driven visibility, and engagement with practical self-management content. These findings support the feasibility and potential utility of a low-cost, multilingual digital education model, while future studies should evaluate its effects on knowledge, behavior, and clinical outcomes.
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STAT+: Despite earnings celebration, UnitedHealth signals more financial pain for employers
UnitedHealth Group smashed through investors’ earnings expectations in the second quarter, with executives confidently saying this new level of profit is durable for the foreseeable future.
The numbers lifted the company’s stock about 3% as it attempts to return to financial dominance under CEO Stephen Hemsley. But a string of comments made during the company’s earnings call on Thursday signals a more ominous path ahead for America’s businesses and workers.
More than 150 million Americans get their health coverage from a job. A new series from STAT chronicles how the costs of that insurance are stretching employers like never before. An increasing number of America’s small businesses are abandoning traditional health benefits completely, forcing workers to find alternative options.
Pete Hegseth’s announcement of annual testosterone screenings for service members divides medical experts
Medical experts are divided on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s announcement that U.S. service members will undergo testosterone deficiency screenings with their annual physical exams.
“War fighters aged 30 and older are going to be tested annually as part of their periodic health assessment,” said Hegseth in a video, posted with the caption “The High-T Department of War.” Elective testosterone testing will be available to younger service members, too, and if recommended, testosterone replacement therapy would be at the individual’s discretion.
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Parkinson’s Genetic Drivers Show Greater Variation Across Ancestries
Results from one of the largest and diverse genetic studies of Parkinson’s disease to date reveal that genetics may play a much greater role in the condition than previously recognized, especially in some ancestries that have historically been underrepresented in clinical studies. Published in The Lancet Neurology, the findings highlight the importance of representative genetic data for the development of targeted treatments that are effective across diverse populations.
Parkinson’s disease is a progressive neurodegenerative condition that affects more than 10 million people worldwide. While decades of research have uncovered key genetic drivers, most cases arise from a complex combination of genetic and environmental factors that can vary widely across populations and individuals.
“The genetic architecture of Parkinson’s disease varies considerably across ancestries, yet most previous genetic studies have focused on individuals of European ancestry,” write the authors of the study, led by Christine Klein, MD, professor of neurogenetics at the University of Lübeck. “This large-scale, multi-ancestry genetic study offers crucial insights into the population-specific genetic architecture of Parkinson’s disease.”
Klein’s team analyzed genome and exome sequencing data from nearly 100,000 individuals across 11 ancestries, using retrospective data from the Global Parkinson’s Genetic Program (GP2). In particular, the study focused on 18 genes with a well-established link to Parkinson’s disease, including both causal and risk variants.
While some genetic contributors were shared across ancestries, the analysis revealed that certain ancestry-specific differences are larger than previously thought. For instance, risk variants of GBA1, the most common across all ancestries, were present in just about 4% of individuals with east Asian ancestry, compared to nearly 53% of those with African ancestry.
The study also identified the first carriers of causal variants in the LRRK2 gene of African ancestries, highlighting the need to include underrepresented populations in large-scale genetic studies. Overall, 2% of Parkinson’s patients were found to carry a single causal genetic variant across 16 genes, ranging from 0.4% among individuals from African ancestry to 10.7% for those with Ashkenazi jew ancestry.
These findings have important implications for ongoing clinical trials evaluating targeted therapies aimed at Parkinson’s patients carrying GBA1 and LRRK2 variants. Without representative data accounting for the broad differences seen across ancestries, precision medicine approaches will fail to be effective for the global population.
Standard genetic screening panels are mainly built using data from individuals of European ancestry, meaning certain variants more common in other populations might end up being overlooked. If key genetic drivers go undetected, patients from underrepresented populations are generally more likely to be locked out of targeted clinical trials evaluating the next generation of Parkinson’s therapeutics.
“Whereas clinical trials targeting GBA1 and LRRK2 variant carriers are primarily performed in Europe and the U.S.A., increased ancestral diversity in Parkinson’s disease research will be crucial to improve diagnostic accuracy, enhance our understanding of disease mechanisms across populations, and ensure equitable application of and access to emerging genetically informed therapies,” Klein and colleagues conclude.
The post Parkinson’s Genetic Drivers Show Greater Variation Across Ancestries appeared first on Inside Precision Medicine.
See, Blind Mice: Consortium’s Drugs Restore Sight
A consortium led by scientists at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) has developed a series of light-activated small molecule drugs that in preclinicial tests restored sight in blind mice. The team’s approach is based on photopharmacology, a technique for reversibly control drug activity using light.
The newly developed compounds, called prosthe6, mimic the function of light sensing photoreceptor cells, which degenerate in blinding diseases such as age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and retinitis pigmentosa (RP).
The prosthe6 compounds target ON-bipolar neurons and in tests were found to successfully restore saccadic eye movements (optokinetic reflex) in blinded zebrafish larvae, a widely used model for studying visual acuity. Even more strikingly, the researchers demonstrated recovery of innate light-avoidance behavior in mouse models of age-related macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa.
Test results suggest that the prosthe6 compounds may be administered by injecting them in the eye, or administered as eye drops. In animal studies the photoswitchable molecules also showed promising preliminary safety profiles, pointing to the development of potential drug candidates for restoring vision in patients with degenerative retinal diseases, without the need for genetic manipulation or implanted devices. Importantly, these compounds are designed to work under normal lighting conditions and do not require light-enhancing devices as optogenetics. They are small, water-soluble molecules that respond to ordinary visible or white light, such as indoor lighting or daylight, without requiring intense or specialized light sources.
“These molecules do not cure blindness, because they do not address the cause of photoreceptor degeneration,” said study co-lead Pau Gorostiza, PhD, ICREA Research Professor at IBEC, leader of the Nanoprobes and Nanoswitches group, member of CIBER-BBN. “But they are remarkably effective at restoring sight, and they do so using a very simple and potentially patient-friendly approach.”
Rosalba Sortino, former PhD student at the University de Barcelona, and currently post-doctoral researcher at Gorostiza’s group at IBEC, added, “Our goal was to restore vision using a molecular mechanism that is as close as possible to how the healthy retina works … Instead of bypassing retinal processing, we aimed to reactivate it right at the same level of the retinal circuit than the lost photoreceptor cells.”
Sortino is co-first author of the team’s published paper in Journal of the American Chemical Society, titled “Restoration of saccadic eye movements and visually guided behavior in ambient white light with photoswitchable small molecules.”
Diseases such as age-related macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa affect 200 million people worldwide and are the leading causes of visual impairment and blindness. Beyond the personal impact on quality of life and independence, vision loss places a global economic burden estimated at over US$400 billion per year in healthcare costs and lost productivity.
![Researchers Rosalba Sortino (left) and Joaquin Martinez Tambella (right) working in the laboratories of the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC). Sortino is a post-doctoral researcher at the Nanoprobes and Nanoswitches group at IBEC and co-first author of the study. Martinez is a PhD student at the Nanoprobes and Nanoswitches group at IBEC and co-first author of the study. [Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC).]](https://www.genengnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/RSortino-JMartinez-300x223.jpeg)
In many of these conditions, photoreceptor (PhR) cells—the retina’s light detectors—progressively degenerate and die. Although the downstream retinal neuronal circuitry remains largely intact and functionally viable, it no longer receives the light signals needed to drive visual processing towards the brain. This opportunity has fueled intense research efforts to develop treatments capable of restoring light sensitivity to the eye. Current strategies include gene therapy—effective only for a very small subset of patients with specific mutations—and electronic retinal prostheses, which are invasive, expensive, and require extensive training for effective use.
More recently, optogenetics and light-responsive drugs have entered clinical testing, the latter with encouraging safety results. “Photopharmacology can develop photoswitchable small molecules to restore vision impairment by conferring light sensitivity to ion channels that are widely expressed in the remaining inner retinal neurons, and a first-in-human clinical trial is ongoing,” the team noted. However, achieving high-quality vision at ambient illumination levels remains a major challenge.
The (IBEC)-led consortium has now developed a new class of photoswitchable small-molecule drugs that are capable of restoring key visual functions in animal models of blindness. The team’s photopharmacology-based technique involves modifying a drug’s chemical structure by adding a light-activated molecular switch, enabling control of the pharmacological action using light. “Unlike (opto)genetic manipulation and surgically implanted retinal electronic prostheses, pharmacotherapy is noninvasive, readily reversible, and can be upgraded when new drugs are approved,” the authors noted. “Medicines are preferred by patients, clinicians, and public healthcare systems, they can be developed and manufactured at lower costs than other approaches and assessed by conventional regulatory procedures and clinical assays.”
The reported work builds on more than a decade of research and was carried out in collaboration with the team co-led by Pedro de la Villa at the University of Alcalá (UAH), as well as researchers from the Institut de Química Avançada de Catalunya (IQAC-CSIC), the University of Barcelona (UB), the Institute Ramón y Cajal of Health Research (IRYCIS), the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), and the Fundació Eduard Soler.
![Researcher Joaquin Martinez Tambella working in the laboratories of the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC). Martinez is a PhD student at the Nanoprobes and Nanoswitches group at IBEC and co-first author of the study. [Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC).]](https://www.genengnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/JMartinez-300x225.jpeg)
The prosthe6 compounds work by acting on a specific type of retinal cells called ON bipolar cells, which normally receive signals from the photoreceptors. “In healthy vision, ON bipolar cells play a key role in passing on information about the presence of light to the rest of the visual circuit,” explained study co-lead de la Villa. “In degenerative eye diseases, although the photoreceptors are lost, much of this underlying circuitry remains intact but inactive. This creates a major therapeutic opportunity.”
By targeting a protein (mGlu6) in this preserved part of the retina, prosthe6 compounds can take over the role of the missing photoreceptors. “… we have targeted metabotropic glutamate 6 (mGlu6) receptors, which are exclusively expressed in ON bipolar cells (OBCs) and localized postsynaptic to PhR cells, thereby leveraging a privileged position to drive physiological visual circuit,” the investigators explained. When light enters the eye, the molecules respond by changing their shape, triggering signals inside the retina in a way that closely resembles natural vision. In this way, the drugs effectively act as “molecular prostheses,” helping the eye process light again without the need for implants or genetic modifications.
Healthy mice naturally prefer to remain in dark environments and instinctively avoid brightly lit areas, a behavior that relies entirely on a functional visual system. Blind mice, by contrast, lose this preference and move indistinctly between light and dark spaces, as they are unable to perceive light. The team showed that after treatment with prosthe6, blind mice once again showed a clear and spontaneous preference for dark areas, indicating that they could perceive light and use this information to guide their behavior.
This recovery occurred without any training and under light levels comparable to those found indoors or on an overcast day, demonstrating that the treatment restores functional light perception capable of driving natural, visually guided behavior.
Two lead compounds, prosthe6-12 and prosthe6-15, showed particularly promising results. The restored behaviors were observed not only after intraocular injection, but also after topical administration as eye drops. “… at least two compounds (prosthe6-12 and -15) appear to be devoid of adverse effects and restore sight by topical administration, which is linked to higher overall clinical success rate than systemic routes for neurological drugs, and to stronger patient adherence,” the investigators pointed out.
The prosthe6 technology is protected by patent and the researchers are now evaluating its safety and formulation to extend the duration of visual rehabilitation. The team is working with Eyelumina, a spin-off company in formation to secure investments that support translational development and future clinical trials.
“Turning this into a therapy is a long and laborious process,” says Gorostiza. “But the results show that there is a realistic possibility of restoring high-quality vision with drugs, non-invasively, reversibly and with a mechanism that is independent of the specific retinal disorder or genetic mutation to reach a majority of patients.”
If successful in humans, the drug-based approach would offer a widely accessible and affordable alternative to existing vision restoration technologies, especially relevant for patients with advanced retinal degeneration for whom no effective treatments currently exist.
In their paper the team further stated, “From a fundamental perspective, prosthe6 constitute new tools for ophthalmology to study the physiopathology of mGlu6 receptors and retinal circuits in vitro and in vivo and contribute to the medicinal chemistry of allosteric modulators. They also achieve the prediction that upstream targeted photopharmacology can deliver nearly native output signals, taking full advantage of the retinal circuit for high-quality vision restoration.”
The post See, Blind Mice: Consortium’s Drugs Restore Sight appeared first on GEN – Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News.
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NHS AI use cases spotlighted by the WEF for work with FLock.io
FLock.io has been spotlighted by the World Economic Forum (WEF)’s MINDS programme for two NHS trusts using its privacy-preserving AI to tackle major diseases. Both trusts use its federated learning platform to train clinical models while maintaining 100% data sovereignty.