AI Model Predicts Risk for 1,000 Diseases Decades in Advance

Researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, in collaboration with the German Cancer Research Centre (DKFZ) and the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, have developed an AI model that uses large-scale health records to understand how human health develops over time and predict the risk of over 1,000 diseases developing within the next two decades.

“Our AI model is a proof of concept, showing that it’s possible for AI to learn many of our long-term health patterns and use this information to generate meaningful predictions,” said Ewan Birney, PhD, interim executive director at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory.

“By modeling how illnesses develop over time, we can start to explore when certain risks emerge and how best to plan early inter