Giving Compass' Take:

· Wellcome publishes a list of ten different ways research is protecting health, ranging from mapping human cells to using AI to help babies at risk of brain injury.

· How has technology and research helped advance medicine and treatment?

· Read more on this subject and how technology is helping protect and improve health.

  1. AI is helping babies at risk of brain injury - Time is critical for doctors treating newborn babies with suspected brain injuries. The sooner treatments such as whole body cooling can be used, the better the outcomes are likely to be.
  2. Scientific collaboration can outsmart epidemics - The global community has shown the power of working together during the Ebola epidemics in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. With one outbreak from earlier this year over but a second ongoing, research has been at the heart of the response.
  3. There's been a milestone in our understanding of mitosis - In January 2018, Wellcome-funded researchers at Edinburgh University answered a question that has perplexed cell biologists for almost 150 years – how cells organise their vast amounts of DNA when they replicate and divide in the process of mitosis.
  4. We're exploring how cities spread diseases, 100 years on from the flu pandemic - This year we launched Contagious Cities – an international cultural project based in New York, Hong Kong and Geneva. It marks the centenary of the 1918 flu pandemic, during which a third of the world’s population was infected and 50 million people died.
  5. Work has begun to map human cells – all 37 trillion of them - The Human Cell Atlas is a global project to map all the cells in the human body. It could transform understanding of many diseases and how to treat them.
  6. Practical pioneers are using new ways to stop superbugs - In November, more than 300 leaders in global health came together in Ghana to discuss how to tackle one of the world's greatest challenges: the rise of antimicrobial resistance.
  7. Accepting difference is fueling creativity - The Hub within Wellcome Collection hosts two-year residencies for groups to explore aspects of medicine, life and art. This year it became home to Heart n Soul(opens in a new tab), a charity and company who will use the space and resources to uncover new insights around the lives of people with autism and learning disabilities. The group includes artists, writers, researchers, designers and clinicians, with and without lived experience of learning disabilities.
  8. New scanner is a breakthrough for imaging brain activity - Scientists at the University of Nottingham are working with University College London on a five-year Wellcome-funded project which has the potential to revolutionise the world of human brain imaging.
  9. There have been important insights about women's health worldwide - From research ethics and women’s role in medical training to abortion stigma and the health of women migrants and prisoners, we have funded a wide range of work that explores women's health around the world.
  10. Neuropixels technology means we can probe whole brain activity - An international team of scientists has produced a new technology that will transform the way we study the brain. The supersensitive Neuropixels probes – each thinner than a human hair – can record the activity of hundreds of individual nerve cells across the brain in real time.

Read the full article about how research is protecting health at Wellcome.