New AI tool can predict a person’s risk of more than 1,000 diseases, say experts
Scientists have developed a new artificial intelligence tool that can predict your personal risk of more than 1,000 diseases, and forecast changes in health a decade in advance.
The generative AI tool was custom-built by experts from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), the German Cancer Research Centre and the University of Copenhagen, using algorithmic concepts similar to those used in large language models (LLMs).
It is one of the most comprehensive demonstrations to date of how generative AI can model human disease progression at scale, and was trained on data from two entirely separate healthcare systems.
“Medical events often follow predictable patterns,” said Tomas Fitzgerald, a staff scientist at EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI). “Our AI model learns those patterns and can forecast future health outcomes.”
The tool works by assessing the probability of whether – and when – someone may develop diseases such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease, respiratory disease and many other disorders.
Named Delphi-2M, it looks for “medical events” in a patient’s history, such as when illnesses were diagnosed, together with lifestyle factors such as whether they are or were obese, smoked or drank alcohol, plus their age and sex.
The tool also looks at anonymised patient record data to predict what might happen over the next decade and beyond.
Source: The Guardian, 17 September 2025