A team of researchers from the National Institute of Health Data Science at Peking University and the Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Peking University People's Hospital conducted a systematic review on methods for handling missing data in electronic health records (EHRs). Missing data pose significant challenges in medical research, potentially leading to biased results and reduced statistical power. This review, which analyzed 46 studies published between 2010 and 2024, compared traditional statistical techniques, such as Multiple Imputation by Chained Equations (MICE), with advanced machine learning approaches, including Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) and k-Nearest Neighbors (KNN).

The findings revealed that machine learning methods, especially GAN-based and time-series imputation techniques like CATSI, often outperformed traditional statistical methods in addressing missing data across diverse datasets. However, no single method was universally optimal, highlighting the need for standardized benchmarks to evaluate the performance of these methodologies under various scenarios. The research team aims to develop such benchmarks and create protocols for reliable missing data handling, ensuring more robust and reproducible outcomes in healthcare studies.

Simon Fraser University (SFU) has been awarded approximately $23 million in funding through the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada’s (NSERC) Lab to Market program, to expand their award-winning Invention to Innovation (i2I) suite of programs over the next five years. The i2I programs provide bilingual innovation and entrepreneurship training for graduate students, researchers and faculty in STEM and healthcare fields.

The majority of politically active Germans experience digital violence. The results of a study conducted by the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in cooperation with the human rights organization HateAid show that around two thirds of affected women have experienced sexualized online attacks. Around one third of the respondents who experienced online aggression were also physically attacked. More than half changed their behavior – from self-restrictions on communications to the intention of abandoning their political involvement.

 In this multicenter validation study, trained health care professionals with artificial intelligence (AI) assistance achieved lung ultrasound images meeting diagnostic standards compared with lung ultrasound experts without AI. This technology could extend access to lung ultrasound to underserved areas lacking expert personnel. 

This survey study documents increasingly prevalent poor mental health from 2011 to 2022 across multiple U.S. health surveys, with notable prevalence differences in Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System and National Survey on Drug Use and Health vs National Health Interview Survey. Inequities in these outcomes by age, sex, and racial and ethnic group were often sizeable and changed over time in distinct ways, consistent with findings in prior literature.