This Perspective discusses progress in the development of robotic capsules for oral drug delivery and the challenges of realizing sophisticated multifunctional robotic pills that can function as closed-loop systems.

This Perspective discusses fairness in machine learning and how algorithmic biases arising in clinical workflows can cause healthcare disparities.

This Review discusses the characteristics of neural probes that are most likely to facilitate the clinical translation of invasive neural interfaces, the abiotic and biotic factors that contribute to their failure and emerging neural-interface architectures.

This Perspective argues that dermal interstitial fluid cannot be generally considered a diagnostically useful proxy for blood, yet that it can offer advantageous utility for the monitoring of therapeutic drugs and of the status of the immune system.

An in-ear integrated array of sensors for electroencephalography, electrooculography and electrodermal activity and for lactate can be used to concurrently monitor brain states and lactate levels in sweat.

A computationally designed antigen based on the receptor binding domain of the spike protein of sarbecoviruses elicits broad humoral responses against severe acute respiratory syndrome viruses in mice, rabbits and guinea pigs.

Elevated extrinsic tissue-scale forces can drive pathological foreign-body responses to implants, mediated by the Rac2-mediated activation of a subpopulation of mechanoresponsive myeloid cells.

A portable multiplexed assay allows for the rapid detection, via plasmonic-gold-enhanced near-infrared fluorescence, of SARS-CoV-2 RNA at single-copy sensitivity and single-nucleotide specificity for the discrimination of variants of the virus.

A subcutaneously injected hydrogel conjugated with antibodies for interleukin-6 substantially reduces the levels of the cytokine during chimaeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy while maintaining its antitumour efficacy.

Adjuvanting the lipid and the encapsulated messenger RNA-encoded antigen in lipid-nanoparticle mRNA vaccines can enhance the efficiency of mRNA delivery and the activation of the immune responses, as shown for a COVID-19 vaccine in mice.

Leverage curiosity, open-mindedness and the deliberate seeking of feedback.

Leveraging or improving established technology for clinical imaging to extract additional physiological information can enhance the quality of the subsequent assessments and widen the technology’s uses.

We provide a roadmap for overhauling faculty-hiring processes to eliminate barriers of entry to historically excluded groups.

Established reasoning behind yearly changes in impact factors is mostly flawed.

The development of machine-learning systems for safer, robust and fairer outcomes should leverage fine-tuning, generalization, explainability and metrics of uncertainty.

The continuing optimization of the safety and applicability of CRISPR for ex vivo genome editing will broaden the prospects of cell therapies.