Medicine and Science from The BMJ

Who actually owns our health data once it is stored in the cloud? And how do we balance the global push for open medical research with the need to protect local populations from data extraction?

Kamran Abbasi sits down with Trudi Lang, Professor of Global Health Research at the University of Oxford and David Strain, Associate Professor of Cardiometabolic Health at the University of Exeter.

Together, they dive into the complex ethical and legal landscape of data sovereignty - unpacking the loopholes that could allow the US government access to NHS data, and how medical research in resource poorer settings can be extractive of data. They set out the case for data sovereignty, and how it could practically work while not stifling essential international research collaboration

Read the related articles on BMJ.com:

The CLOUD Act: NHS data must be safeguarded from US interests by David Strain

A commitment to act on data sharing by Kamran Abbasi

Data sharing must evolve towards data sovereignty by Trudi Lang

Two NHS maternity reviews have been published over the past few weeks. The biggest ever conducted, involving nearly 2500 families, investigated services at Nottingham university hospitals NHS trust. It was led by senior midwife, Donna Ockenden, and its findings on poor and avoidable harm to babies and mothers have reverberated throughout UK healthcare.

This was followed immediately by publication of an independent investigation into maternity and neonatal services in England, conducted by Valerie Amos, which states that the UK's poor maternity care is "on a scale that shames our society".

We speak to  Kate Duhig, clinical senior lecturer at  Kings College London, and Marian Knight, professor of of maternal and child population health at the University of Oxford, about why we keep having reports saying the same thing, but little action to solve the problem.

As many wealthy nations have stepped back from previous aid promises, a new force has emerged to fill the gaps: private finance. David McCoy is professor of global public health at the United Nations University, and explains why turning to investment banks, wealth funds, and private equity in the pursuit of universal health coverage might cause more problems than it solves.

 

Reading list:

Dangers of finance capital in healthcare

Amos maternity review: Doctors must work differently as units “no longer fit for purpose,” but report is dogged by controversy

Nottingham maternity review: 520 mothers and babies were seriously harmed on “toxic” ward, damning inquiry finds

Australia has been in the vanguard of legislation to try and reduce the influence of social media on children and young people - their ban for under 16s was introduced on the 10th of December 2025, to great fanfare, and a lot of interest around the world.

But how effective are these bans at keeping children away from social media?

New research just published on BMJ.com has looked at that question of efficacy - finding that children are using the most simple tactics to evade the ban.

To dicuss what that means, we're joined by two of the authors of that research Courtney Barnes and Luke Wolfenden from the University of Newcastle, Australia.

We’re also joined by Amrit Purba, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Louise Holly, from the Digital Transformations for Health Lab, in Geneva, who have written commentaries to go with that research.

 

Reading list

Assessing early effects of Australia’s Social Media Minimum Age Act on adolescents’ social media use 

Learning from Australia’s social media age restriction policy  

Early data from Australia indicate that social media companies can’t be relied on to protect children

The US military’s Operation “Epic Fury” highlighted the devastating cost of using artificial intelligence for rapid military planning. Thomas Adamkiewicz, associate professor at Morehouse School of Medicine, and Zulfiqar Bhutta, Robert Harding Inaugural Chair in Global Child Health at the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, to discuss why international humanitarian law is lagging dangerously behind technology, and why we urgently need a new era of legal frameworks to govern AI use in war.

 

Direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising of prescription medicines is strictly illegal everywhere in the world except for the United States and New Zealand. Deborah Cohen, investigative journalist, joins us to explain how global social media platforms are making borders porous, allowing Hollywood celebrities and high-profile influencers to broadcast drug endorsements directly into the feeds of UK citizens.

 

Finally, Between 2020 and 2023, the UK government allocated £1.7 billion specifically intended for frontline doctor training. However, a deep-dive investigation has revealed that a staggering £400 million of that funding is completely unaccounted for - David Hutchison, paediatrics registrar, and Jonathan De Oliveira, GP trainee, join us to describe what they found.

Reading List

AI warfare demands a new era of humanitarian law

Bad influencers: How social media imported US-style drug advertising to the UK

“Black hole” of medical student funding

The heated debate on prostate cancer screening boils down to one question: should men be routinely screened?

Two recent position statements from the UK’s national screening committee published in the BMJ show that screening decisions are steeped in complexity. 

The benefits of screening may be easier to grasp, but the harms of overdiagnosis and overtreatment are given less attention. Can we close the divide between the public and academic discourse?

 

Guest: Sian Taylor-Phillips is professor of population health at the University of Warwick and a member of the UK national screening committee.

 

Further Reading:

UK National Screening Committee position statement on surrogate outcomes in cancer screening trials

Prostate cancer screening: Committee rejects calls for mass testing programme despite pressure

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