Childhood vaccination is a cornerstone of public health, yet disparities in vaccination coverage persist across England. These disparities are shaped by complex interactions among various factors, including geographic, demographic, socioeconomic, and cultural (GDSC) factors. Previous studies mostly rely on cross-sectional data and traditional statistical approaches that assess individual or limited sets of variables in isolation. Such methods may fall short in capturing the dynamic and multivariate nature of vaccine uptake. In this paper, we conducted a longitudinal machine learning analysis of childhood vaccination coverage across 150 districts in England from 2021 to 2024. Using vaccination data from NHS records, we applied hierarchical clustering to group districts by vaccination coverage into low- and high-coverage clusters. A CatBoost classifier was then trained to predict districts' vaccination clusters using their GDSC data. Finally, the SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) method was used to interpret the predictors' importance. The classifier achieved high accuracies of 92.1, 90.6, and 86.3 in predicting districts' vaccination clusters for the years 2021-2022, 2022-2023, and 2023-2024, respectively. SHAP revealed that geographic, cultural, and demographic variables, particularly rurality, English language proficiency, the percentage of foreign-born residents, and ethnic composition, were the most influential predictors of vaccination coverage, whereas socioeconomic variables, such as deprivation and employment, consistently showed lower importance, especially in 2023-2024. Surprisingly, rural districts were significantly more likely to have higher vaccination rates. Additionally, districts with lower vaccination coverage had higher populations whose first language was not English, who were born outside the UK, or who were from ethnic minority groups.

Half a billion people worldwide live with diabetes. There are different types with different causes, but all lead people to have too much sugar in their blood. If not well controlled, this excess glucose can inflict damage throughout the body, putting people at risk of gum disease, nerve damage, kidney disease, blindness, amputations, heart attack, stroke and cancer. For now, patients manage the condition with medicines, insulin and lifestyle changes, but a new generation of treatments could reverse the disease. Details of the first woman treated for type 1 diabetes with stem cells taken from her own body were announced last month.

When Elinor O'Donovan found out she had been randomly selected to participate in a basic income pilot scheme, she couldn't believe her luck. In return for a guaranteed salary of just over 1,400 ( 1,200) a month from the Irish government, all the 27-year-old artist had to do was fill out a bi-annual questionnaire about her wellbeing and how she spends her time. "It was like winning the lottery. I was in such disbelief," she says. The income, which she will receive until September 2025, has enabled her to give up temping and focus instead on her art.

The first UK clinical trial of an artificial intelligence (AI) device which has the potential to transform bowel cancer care is underway at nine NHS trusts. The COLO-DETECT study is trialing the use of GI Genius, an AI device which helps clinicians identify polyps during colonoscopies. Five hundred patients have already been recruited to take part in the trial at one of nine participating trusts. The AI device is capable of highlighting area that it thinks may contain a polyp – from which most bowel cancers develop. Spotting as many polyps as possible allows the area to be more closely examined to determine if polyps are present and if they need to be removed.

When diagnosed at its earliest stage more than 9 in 10 people with bowel cancer will survive their disease for over five years compared with 1 in 10 when it's diagnosed late. The study is hoping to recruit over 2000 participants before September 2022. Colorectal cancer affects 1 in 15 men and 1 in 18 women in the UK with 16,600 deaths every year; it is the UK's second most deadly cancer. Bowel cancer starts when a polyp (or'adenoma') progresses to cancer, but it can be prevented if detected early enough. Colonoscopy is the'gold standard' assessment for bowel cancer and Adenoma Detection Rate (ADR) (which measures how many polyps the doctor removes) has a notable impact on bowel cancer outcomes.