Medical LLMs may show real-world potential in identifying individuals with major depressive disorder using WhatsApp voice note recordings
Peer-Reviewed Publication
This month, we’re focusing on artificial intelligence (AI), a topic that continues to capture attention everywhere. Here, you’ll find the latest research news, insights, and discoveries shaping how AI is being developed and used across the world.
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 8-May-2026 02:16 ET (8-May-2026 06:16 GMT/UTC)
A new medical large language model (LLM) achieved over 91 percent accuracy in identifying female participants diagnosed with major depressive disorder after analyzing a short WhatsApp audio recording where participants described their week, according to a study published January 21, 2026 in the open-access journal PLOS Mental Health by Victor H. O. Otani, from Santa Casa de São Paulo School of Medical Sciences and Infinity Doctors Inc., Brazil, and colleagues.
The ubiquity of smart devices—not just phones and watches, but lights, refrigerators, doorbells and more, all constantly recording and transmitting data—is creating massive volumes of digital information that drain energy and slow data transmission speeds. With the rising use of artificial intelligence in industries ranging from healthcare and finance to transportation and manufacturing, addressing the issue is becoming more pressing.
In a world first, a research team led by the University of Oxford’s Department of Engineering Science has shown it is possible to engineer a quantum mechanical process inside proteins, opening the door to a new class of quantum-enabled biological technologies. The study has been published today (21 January) in Nature.
People who have ADHD traits at age 10 are more likely than those without such traits to have physical health problems and to report physical health-related disability at age 46, according to a study led by University College London (UCL) and University of Liverpool researchers.