Insight
AI tools can detect early signs of intimate partner violence
AI tools flagged intimate partner violence risk in medical records up to four years before patients sought care, research suggests.
The models were built to identify patterns in health records that could point to abuse before someone enrolled in care at a domestic violence treatment centre.
Researchers said the findings suggest AI could support earlier screening and help healthcare providers start conversations about intimate partner violence sooner, though the tools still need broader testing.
The study was led by researchers at Mass General Brigham, working with collaborators at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US.
Bharti Khurana is principal investigator, corresponding and senior author, founding director of the Trauma Imaging Research and Innovation Center and an emergency radiologist in the Mass General Brigham department of radiology.
Khurana said: “Our research offers proof of concept that AI can support clinicians in flagging possible abuse earlier.
“Earlier identification of intimate partner violence and future risk may enable clinicians to intervene sooner and help prevent significant mental and physical health consequences.”
The researchers trained three machine-learning models using electronic medical record data from 673 women who visited a domestic abuse intervention and prevention centre at a US academic health centre between 2017 and 2022, as well as 4,169 demographically matched controls who did not report intimate partner violence.
Electronic medical records are digital versions of a patient’s health history, while machine learning is a type of AI that identifies patterns in data to make predictions.
The three models included a tabular model using structured electronic medical record data such as diagnoses, medications and a social deprivation index based on zip code, a notes model using unstructured clinical notes and radiology and emergency department reports, and a fusion model combining both data types called Holistic AI in Medicine.
When tested on a separate group of 168 patients who visited the intimate partner violence intervention and prevention centre in the same timeframe and 1,043 controls, all three models showed high accuracy. The fusion model performed best at 88 per cent.
Using archived, time-stamped medical records, that fusion model identified 80.5 per cent of cases in advance, on average more than 3.7 years before patients sought care.
The researchers then validated the models using data from two additional patient groups that were not included in the training or testing data, as well as controls, and found similarly high accuracy.
Previous research led by Bharti Khurana found that women who frequently undergo imaging studies in the emergency department and have specific types of injuries are more likely to later report intimate partner violence.
This new AI research identified additional risk factors for intimate partner violence.
People with mental health disorders, chronic pain and frequent emergency department visits were more likely to experience intimate partner violence, whereas patients who regularly accessed preventive services such as mammograms and immunisations had a lower risk.
More than one-third of women and one in 10 men will experience intimate partner violence in their lifetimes, yet people rarely disclose it to health providers because of fear, stigma, or financial or psychosocial dependence on the person abusing them.
The authors said the models were developed and validated in patients who had sought care for or disclosed intimate partner violence, which may limit accuracy in predicting intimate partner violence in people who are less likely to seek care or disclose it to providers.
They also said the control group in the training data may have included false negatives, or patients who were experiencing intimate partner violence but did not report it, which could reduce model accuracy.
Khurana said future training with larger, more diverse patient datasets over longer time periods will improve the model’s accuracy.
GSK said its ovarian cancer drug shrank or cleared tumours in more than 60 per cent of patients in an early trial as CCO Luke Miels pushes faster development.
The company said that in an early-stage trial, Mocertatug Rezetecan, known as Mo-Rez, shrank or eliminated tumours in 62 per cent of patients with ovarian cancer after chemotherapy had failed, and in 67 per cent of those with endometrial cancer.
Hesham Abdullah, GSK’s global head of cancer research and development, said: “Treatment of gynaecological cancers remains a major challenge, with a pressing need for new therapies that offer improved response rates.
“With Mo-Rez we now have compelling evidence of a promising clinical profile.”
GSK acquired the Mo-Rez treatment, an antibody-drug conjugate, from China’s Hansoh Pharma in late 2023 and has trialled it in 224 patients around the world, including the UK, over the past year.
Only a few patients needed to stop treatment because of side effects, the most common being nausea.
It is given every three weeks by intravenous infusion, meaning directly into a vein.
Combined with data from a separate intermediate trial in China, the results have given the British drugmaker the confidence to go straight to late-stage trials, with five clinical studies planned globally in the next few months, including on patients in the UK.
Speaking to journalists before the conference, Abdullah described Mo-Rez as a “key asset” in the company’s growing cancer portfolio.
It is expected to be a blockbuster drug, with peak annual sales of more than £2bn, which GSK hopes will help it achieve its 2031 sales target of £40bn.
A few years ago GSK did not have any cancer drugs on the market, but it now has four approved medicines and 13 in clinical development.
Last year, oncology generated nearly £2bn in sales, up 43 per cent from 2024, with sales of its endometrial cancer drug Jemperli rising 89 per cent.
Self-employment is linked to lower rates of high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, poor health and binge drinking in Hispanic women, research suggests.
The findings, published in the peer-reviewed journal Ethnicity & Disease, suggest work structure may be related to cardiovascular disease risk among this group.
Dr Kimberly Narain is assistant professor of medicine in the division of general internal medicine and health services research at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, senior author of the study, and director of health services and health optimisation research for the Iris Cantor-UCLA Women’s Health Center.
She said: “Hispanic women experience a disproportionate burden of heart disease compared to non-Hispanic women. This is the first study to link the structure of work with risks for heart disease among this group of women.”
The researchers examined 2003 to 2022 data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System to assess the association between self-employment, cardiovascular disease risk factors and health outcomes for Hispanic women.
The data included 165,600 Hispanic working women. Of those, about 21,000, or 13 per cent, were self-employed rather than working for wages or a salary.
Overall, the researchers found that self-employed women were less likely to report cardiovascular-disease-associated health problems.
They were also about 11 per cent more likely to report exercising compared with their non-self-employed counterparts.
Specifically, they found that self-employed Hispanic women had a 1.7 percentage point lower chance of reporting diabetes, roughly a 23 per cent decline.
They also had a 3.3 percentage point lower chance of reporting hypertension, roughly a 17 per cent decline.
The study also found a 5.9 percentage point lower chance of reporting obesity, roughly a 15 per cent decline.
It found a 2.0 percentage point lower chance of reporting binge drinking, roughly a 2 per cent decline.
It also found a 2.5 percentage point lower chance of reporting poor or fair overall health, roughly a 13 per cent decline.
The relationship between heart disease risks and the structure of work among Hispanic women was not driven by access to healthcare or differences in income, Narain said.
In fact, the decrease in high blood pressure linked to self-employment was nearly as large as the decrease in high blood pressure linked to being in the highest income group.
The study has some limitations.
The researchers relied on self-reported outcomes, which might be less reliable among ethnic and racial minorities and those from a lower socioeconomic background.
In addition, the researchers’ definition of poor mental health does not entirely match the accepted definition in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
They also did not have data allowing them to examine the specific types of occupations held by the women.
The study design also cannot prove any causal relationship between self-employment and cardiovascular disease risk, which is a subject the researchers will explore.
“The next step in the research is to conduct studies that are able to better assess if the structure of work is a cause of higher heart disease risks among Hispanic women.”
Narain said this.
Study co-authors are Lisette Collins, who led the research, and Dr Frederick Ferguson of UCLA.
Grants from the Iris Cantor-UCLA Women’s Health Center-Leichtman-Levine-TEM program and the UCLA National Clinician Scholars Program supported the research.
Working from home is linked to 0.32 more children per woman when both partners do it at least once a week, research across 38 countries suggests.
The study found that among working adults aged 20 to 45, estimated lifetime fertility, meaning children already born or fathered plus plans for future children, rises when one or both partners work remotely.
In the US, the increase was even higher at 0.45 children per woman.
On average, women whose partners did not work from home had 2.26 children.
When the woman worked from home at least one day a week, this rose to 2.48. When both partners did so, it increased to 2.58.
If the man worked from home at least one day a week, the increase was more limited at 2.36 children.
The research, by Steven J. Davis and colleagues and published as a working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research, points to three possible explanations.
Remote working may make it easier to balance childcare with paid work, leading some couples to have more children.
Families with children may also be more likely to look for remote roles. Or the growing availability of those roles may lift fertility by opening up more parent-friendly jobs.
“All three stories align with the idea that WFH jobs make it easier for parents to combine child rearing and employment,” the report suggests.
The pattern held both after the pandemic, between 2023 and 2025, and before it, between 2017 and 2019.
The implications for national fertility rates vary mainly because working-from-home rates differ widely between countries.
Among workers aged 20 to 45, the share working from home at least one day a week ranges from 21 per cent in Japan to 60 per cent in Vietnam. The UK ranks third globally and leads Europe at 54 per cent.
The report estimates that, if “interpreted causally”, remote working accounts for 8.1 per cent of US fertility, equal to about 291,000 births a year as of 2024.
The researchers note that while this may sound modest, it is larger than the effect of government spending on early childhood care and education in the US.
“Bringing WFH rates to the levels that currently prevail in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada has the potential to materially boost fertility in many other countries,” the report suggests.
However, the research cautions against broad policy approaches, saying the desire for remote work varies widely between individuals, and that it is not practical in every job or organisation.
“Thus, policy interventions that push for a one-size-fits-all approach to working arrangements are likely to yield unhappier workers and lower productivity,” it warns.
A UK Parliament report has also found that remote and hybrid work can boost employment, with parents, carers and people with disabilities likely to benefit most from more flexible working options.
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