Comment in 2023

Patients, physicians, and hospital administrators in the USA are often unaware of how legislation governs medical data—but agree that rights over such data should be expanded for patients and curtailed for health systems

Individuals with cutaneous melanoma who are treated with neoadjuvant immunotherapy show a substantial improvement; this should be incorporated into standard care.

High-income countries have a wealth of genomics expertise that can be rapidly activated to deal with disease threats. African countries should invest in a federated data-management system for genomics epidemiology to deal with such threats better.

New federal rules require researchers to submit plans for how to manage and share their scientific data, but institutional ethics boards may be underprepared to review them.

UNICEF and other international bodies must produce a clear plan that prioritizes development and education for children with disabilities, especially in low- and middle-income settings, as required for achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Mobile diagnostics and point-of-care tests can improve patient outcomes by allowing remote monitoring during routine clinical care and in digital clinical trials.

Paleogenomics can help elucidate the genetic basis of modern diseases, including inborn errors of immunity that impair the response to infections, providing a tool for drug development.

Vaccines against different SARS-CoV-2 variants have been approved, but continued surveillance is needed to determine when the antigen composition of vaccines should be updated, together with clinical studies to assess vaccine efficacy.

There is abundant evidence that e-cigarettes can help some individuals to quit smoking, so they should be more widely recommended as smoking cessation aids.

The expansion of digital health comes with benefits, but also potential harms, including those to economic, psychological and societal wellbeing. This article presents a framework to characterize cyber harms so that they can be prevented and mitigated.

Data sharing enhances the value of medical research and builds trust in clinical trials, but more biomedical researchers need to be trained in these approaches, which include meta-research, data science and ethical, legal and social issues.

The drug-scheduling system, particularly the approach to rescheduling, should be reformed to ensure all beneficial medicines, including marijuana and psilocybin, are available to scientists and patients.

The US Food and Drug Administration should address health misinformation through existing and new regulatory approaches, including modernizing product labeling, investing in infodemic surveillance and addressing the roles of the internet and social media.

Integrating microbial sequencing data into electronic health records, while presenting privacy concerns, will improve patient care and population health and will expand the secondary uses of such data.

Technological innovation and changes to regulation are disrupting the hearing health sector, with implications for data privacy, product safety and accessibility, and provide challenges and opportunities for equitable hearing health.