Evidence map›Paper›PMID 39794311›Full record

ArticleNature communications2025

Medical history predicts phenome-wide disease onset and enables the rapid response to emerging health threats.

Jakob Steinfeldt, Benjamin Wild, Thore Buergel, Maik Pietzner, Julius Upmeier Zu Belzen, Andre Vauvelle, Stefan Hegselmann, Spiros Denaxas, Harry Hemingway, Claudia Langenberg and 3 more

Erratum issuedAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Nature communications, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 5 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
5citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

5 citing papers in PubMed.

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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

13 authors.

Jakob Steinfeldt *Department of Cardiology, Angiology and Intensive Care Medicine, Deutsches Herzzentrum der Charité (DHZC), Berlin, Germany.
Benjamin Wild *Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences, University College London, London, UK.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7492-8448
Thore Buergel *Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences, University College London, London, UK.
Maik PietznerComputational Medicine, Berlin Institute of Health (BIH), Charite - University Medicine Berlin, Berlin, Germany.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3437-9963
Julius Upmeier Zu BelzenCenter for Digital Health, Berlin Institute of Health (BIH), Charite - University Medicine Berlin, Berlin, Germany.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0966-4458
Andre VauvelleInstitute of Health Informatics, University College London, London, UK.
Stefan HegselmannInstitute for Medical Engineering and Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Massachusetts, USA.
Spiros DenaxasInstitute of Health Informatics, University College London, London, UK.
Harry HemingwayInstitute of Health Informatics, University College London, London, UK.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2279-0624
Claudia LangenbergComputational Medicine, Berlin Institute of Health (BIH), Charite - University Medicine Berlin, Berlin, Germany.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5017-7344
Ulf LandmesserDepartment of Cardiology, Angiology and Intensive Care Medicine, Deutsches Herzzentrum der Charité (DHZC), Berlin, Germany.
John DeanfieldInstitute of Cardiovascular Sciences, University College London, London, UK.
Roland EilsCenter for Digital Health, Berlin Institute of Health (BIH), Charite - University Medicine Berlin, Berlin, Germany. roland.eils@bih-charite.de.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0034-4036

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed a global deficiency of systematic, data-driven guidance to identify high-risk individuals. Here, we illustrate the utility of routinely recorded medical history to predict the risk for 1741 diseases across clinical specialties and support the rapid response to emerging health threats such as COVID-19. We developed a neural network to learn from health records of 502,489 UK Biobank participants. Importantly, we observed discriminative improvements over basic demographic predictors for 1546 (88.8%) endpoints. After transferring the unmodified risk models to the All of US cohort, we replicated these improvements for 1115 (78.9%) of 1414 investigated endpoints, demonstrating generalizability across healthcare systems and historically underrepresented groups. Ultimately, we showed how this approach could have been used to identify individuals vulnerable to severe COVID-19. Our study demonstrates the potential of medical history to support guidance for emerging pandemics by systematically estimating risk for thousands of diseases at once at minimal cost.

Indexed as

COVID-19Medical History TakingAdultAgedFemaleHumansMaleMiddle AgedNeural Networks, ComputerPandemicsPhenotypeRisk AssessmentRisk FactorsSARS-CoV-2United Kingdom

Identifiers

PMID39794311
PMCPMC11724087

What OpenQuestion holds

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LicenceCC BY
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Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.