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If June was about redefining ethics and regulation, then July took that ambition and wired it straight into healthcare's central nervous system.
First, a sweeping “MAHA” tech-focused health initiative was unveiled, featuring more than 60 public-private partners, from Apple to OpenAI, working to make data interoperability, patient-controlled records, and AI-powered diagnostics a national standard. It’s a push to digitise, personalise, and decentralise care, all while driving convenience.
Think patient portals, wearables, and AI check-ins. Think healthcare that behaves more like fintech.
Then came the Trump-backed healthcare mega bill, passed on 1 July, which does something far more analogue to tighten Medicaid eligibility, reintroduce work requirements, and implement six-month renewal cycles for access. For those watching equity and access, it’s a step that could radically reshape who gets care, and who doesn’t.
Adding more disruption to the mix, reports surfaced that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is planning to reconstruct the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, potentially removing all 16 current members.
The Task Force determines which screenings are recommended and therefore covered by insurance. Rebuilding it with “working doctors” may bring fresh insight, but critics worry about science taking a back seat to ideology.
Meanwhile, AI in healthcare has gone from buzzword to battleground. A team of researchers in Germany has demonstrated that AI can now assess a tumour’s “stemness”, a measure of how likely cancer cells are to multiply and resist treatment.
In plain terms, we’re closer than ever to predicting how aggressive a tumour is, which could revolutionise how we plan therapies.
But this isn’t the only breakthrough. Everlab, a new U.S. startup, just raised $10 million to scale AI-driven preventive health diagnostics. The company wants to catch chronic illnesses before symptoms appear, using blood tests, predictive models, and behavioural nudges.
At the same time, patients are starting to fight back against insurance denials using AI tools. Companies are deploying bots to auto-appeal claim rejections, improving approval rates and pushing back on opaque bureaucracy.
In the UK, the past month has shown that workforce unrest and systemic reform can, and often do, run side by side. Junior doctors staged another major strike, demanding a 29% pay rise. Their demands reflect deeper frustrations over burnout, stagnation, and an NHS they feel is stretched too far.
In a parallel thread, the NHS unveiled a new 10-year plan to shift more care into community settings, digitise services, expand genomic testing, and integrate wearables and AI into early diagnostics.
It’s a compelling but uncertain vision. Reform on paper is easy. Reform on the ground? That’s the real test.
Globally, a different kind of threat loomed larger this month, the spread of mosquito-borne chikungunya, flagged by the World Health Organization (WHO). With rising cases in Asia and Southern Europe, climate-sensitive diseases are proving they won’t stay local for long.
This adds weight to another big July moment, the WHO’s Global Digital Health Convening, where 100+ countries gathered to align on data, infrastructure, and access.
Finally, in the race to reimagine drug development, Isomorphic Labs, the AI drug discovery venture from DeepMind, announced its first AI-designed medicines are entering human trials. It’s a moonshot moment, years of simulation, training, and hypothesis now being tested in real-world patients.
If there’s a throughline to July, it’s this, everything is up for redesign. From how we screen and diagnose to how we govern, fund, and fight for care. Healthcare isn’t just evolving, it’s erupting.