In the “Start-Up, Scale-Up” review report published last year, chancellor Rachel Reeves promised to make Britain the “high-growth startup hub of the world.” Now, almost six months into the new government, entrepreneurs remain encouraged by the promises made in the Labour manifesto. “The ambition embodied in Great British Energy and …

“The adoption of new ideas and the pace of change in health care can lag behind other innovations that consumers experience every day,” says Yves Behar, an industrial designer and founder of design firm fuseproject. People, Behar continues, become frustrated when they contrast their experience in clinics and hospitals versus, …

In December last year, the UK’s shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, visited Singapore General Hospital, regarded as one of the best in the world. What he witnessed there surprised him: “Patients arrive having already registered their appointments via an app. They check in on touchscreen kiosks awaiting them at reception. …

In 2013, the US Food and Drug Administration made an unprecedented recommendation, advising that women should receive a lower dosage of the insomnia drug zolpidem than men. The rationale behind it was that medication seemed to affect women for longer periods, which could become a safety issue. However, in 2019, …

In 1997, a French woman named Jeanne Calment died at the age of 122. She was the world’s oldest verified person, according to the Gerontology Research Group. Her daily habits included drinking a glass of port wine and smoking a cigarette after meals (she also ate 2.5 pounds of chocolate …

In 2010, three months before her seventh birthday, Ella Roberta suddenly developed a chest infection and a severe cough. Her mother, Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, took her to the local hospital in Lewisham, South East London, where she was initially diagnosed with asthma. In the following months, she got worse and began …

In 2021, AI research lab DeepMind announced the development of its first digital biology neural network, AlphaFold. The model was capable of accurately predicting the 3D structure of proteins, which determines the functions that these molecules play. “We’re just floating bags of water moving around,” says Pushmeet Kohli, VP of …

Designer Thomas Heatherwick thinks the construction industry is in a crisis. “We’ve just got so used to buildings that are boring,” says the man behind London’s revived Routemaster bus, Google’s Bay View, and New York’s Little Island. “New buildings, again and again, are too flat, too plain, too straight, too …

Lucy Easthope, one of the UK’s top experts in disaster planning, has advised the UK government on major international incidents such as 9/11, the Grenfell Tower fire, the war in Ukraine and, of course, the Covid pandemic. “If you were a pandemic planner in 2020, then there have been few …

“The statistics are frightening: Dementia is the biggest killer in the UK. It has been the leading cause of death for women since 2011,” says Hilary Evans, CEO of Alzheimer’s Research UK and cochair of the UK Dementia Mission. “One in two of us will be affected by dementia either …