Artificial intelligence can predict people's health problems over a decade into the future, say scientists.
The technology has learned to spot patterns in people's medical records to calculate their risk of more than 1,000 diseases.
The researchers say it is like a weather forecast that anticipates a 70% chance of rain – but for human health.
Their vision is to use the AI model to spot high-risk patients to prevent disease and to help hospitals understand demand in their area, years ahead of time.
The model – called Delphi-2M - uses similar technology to well-known AI chatbots like ChatGPT.
In a similar way to predicting the sequence of words in a sentence, Delphi-2M has been trained to find patterns in anonymous medical records.
It estimates the likelihood of 1,231 diseases without predicting exact dates for events, such as a heart attack.
Prof Ewan Birney, interim executive director at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, expressed excitement, stating that this model could reveal probabilities for various diseases simultaneously.
Initially developed using anonymous UK data, the model has been validated with additional medical records, and it shows promising accuracy.
The technology is still in research phases and requires regulatory oversight before clinical use.
Once operational, it could transform disease prevention and personalize patient care significantly.
