AI can now diagnose dementia from patient records, even if the records look different

Researchers have built an AI that can understand patient data from different hospital systems without needing to be retrained. This means the AI can diagnose dementia using varied electronic health records and MRI scans, even if it has never seen that specific record format before.

For decades, medical AI has struggled because every hospital uses slightly different ways to record patient information. This paper shows a way around that problem, allowing AI to make sense of messy, real-world data. It means AI tools could be deployed much more widely in healthcare, without needing expensive custom engineering for each new hospital system.