What Could Go Right? AI Triples Stroke Recovery Rates

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AI Triples Stroke Recovery Rates

Artificial intelligence taketh away, but so doth it giveth. Yes, the technology exacerbates challenges in education, information, national security, and mental health. But, boy, was I reminded this week—by an obscure article detailing a cardiology conference in Madrid—what a boon it is to the medical field. In England, it has tripled the proportion of stroke patients who fully recover.

Here’s how it works:

There are three main types of strokes, all of which involve the interruption of blood flow to the brain but otherwise require different treatment—from blood thinners for lighter blockages to emergency surgery for more severe ones. When a patient arrives at a hospital, CT scans that help diagnose the type of stroke determine the care team’s next steps.

Time is crucial. Patients with strokes caused by blood clots lose 1.9 million neurons, 14 billion synapses, and 7.5 miles (12km) of brain signal-transmitting nerve fibers each minute a stroke is left untreated.

Fortunately, speed is the AI program’s superpower. It reads the scans and produces a “perfusion map” report, which shows clinicians the areas of the brain that are receiving little to no blood—in only a minute.

This report reaches the entire clinical team immediately and simultaneously, streamlining a consultation process that used to progress in stages. With the team in quick lockstep, a stroke patient can begin treatment much faster—in England, a full hour faster.

In early-stage analysis of pilots run by the National Health Service (NHS), this has led to a tripling of recovery rates. Nearly half of stroke patients now recover to the point of functional independence, up from 16%.

NHS began their pilots of the AI system in 2019 and as of summer 2024 had rolled out the technology to all 107 stroke centers in England. While similar systems are also available in Europe and a number of hospitals in the United States, England, from what I can tell, is the first to reach nationwide coverage.

And this is not the end of AI’s impact on stroke care, either. Researchers are hoping that the technology could soon make it easier to predict strokes, as well as recover from them.

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What Could Go Right? S7 E30: Whatever Happened to Civics? with Nick Capodice

It’s time for a lesson in civics! Zachary and Emma are joined by Nick Capodice, co-host of the Civics 101 podcast where he gets into the basics of how the US government works and also helps teachers design lesson plans to pair with the show. Nick highlights how our collective grasp on how things work in Washington is slipping, the decrease of civics education funding since the 1950s, and the recent rise of deep divisions in American politics. He focuses on the importance of civic participation and voting and how to reclaim your voice beyond the ballot box. | Listen now

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By the Numbers

>90%: Share of Japan’s population that now lives in areas where same-sex partners can be recognized legally as a family

7.5M: Number of people lifted out of poverty in Uzbekistan since 2016

80%: Morocco’s preschool enrollment rate in 2024, up from 45% in 2018

5: Years it took for Uruguay to fully decarbonize its grid

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Quick Hits

🌏 China has pledged, for the first time, to cut its greenhouse gas emissions. The target is a 7–10% reduction by 2035, much less than what is needed to keep the Paris Agreement alive. Some experts, however, are hopeful that China will follow a historical pattern of underpromising but overdelivering.

🧬 Huntington’s disease has been successfully treated for the first time. The new treatment, a type of gene therapy that is performed during brain surgery, slows the disease’s progression by 75%, giving patients decades more of “good quality life.”

🏭 The UK and other European countries will receive their first shipments of “zero-carbon cement” products this month, now that the world’s first commercial-scale carbon-capture plant for cement is up and running in Norway.

⚖️ The number of minors entered into marriage decreased every year in the US between 2001 and 2020, a new report on the state of child marriage has found. (It rose slightly in 2021, the latest year of available data.) And, Bolivia has just banned child marriage, becoming the 14th Latin American country to do so.

📉 Energy-related emissions per capita decreased in every state between 2005 and 2023, the result of burning less coal and more gas, as well as transitioning to wind and solar power. Maryland (-49%) saw the biggest decrease. Nationwide, total emissions fell 20%.

💉 Philanthropies have struck a deal with the maker of lenacapavir, a twice-yearly shot that provides full protection against HIV, to make it available in low- and middle-income countries for $40 per patient—the same cost as for the daily oral pills currently on the market. 

🌲 The Amazon’s biggest trees are more climate resilient than previously believed, according to a new paper that found that they are becoming larger and more numerous as they draw carbon from the atmosphere. The forest is still at risk from fires and land clearance, however.

🪐 NASA has confirmed the existence of 6,000 planets outside of our solar system, and 8,000 more are awaiting confirmation. Most are rocky; some have two stars or lava fields, and others are “surrounded by clouds of precious stones.”

📈 One of America’s fastest-growing demographics? Centenarians. The number of Americans over the age of 100 ballooned by 50% between 2010 and 2020. Most are white women, but the group is becoming more racially diverse and slightly more male.

👀 What we’re watching: Maternal vaccines for a notorious baby killer, the bacterium GBS, are finally on the way.

💡 Editor’s pick: New technologies are enabling taxonomists to identify insects at a pace previously unimaginable. Four out of five insect species have never been recorded by science.

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TPN Member Originals

(Who are our Members? Get to know them.)

• If I work harder, will you love me? | The Atlantic ($) | Arthur C. Brooks
• If only we’d fight as hard to save our democracy as Ukrainians are fighting to save theirs | NYT ($) | Thomas L. Friedman
• How Trump nearly doubled his support from black voters | WaPo ($) | Theodore R. Johnson
• We need to think straight about God and politics | NYT ($) | David Brooks
• Everyday life is better together | Flourishing Friday | Clay Routledge
• The dangerous war on Tylenol | Slow Boring | Matthew Yglesias
• Veto Russia | Diane Francis | Diane Francis
• The MAGA crusade to take down American science and medicine | Lucid | Ruth Ben-Ghiat
• The right’s post-Kirk crackdown has a familiar mob logic | NYT ($) | Steven Pinker
• This polarization is poisonous. But there are partial victories. | WaPo ($) | Fareed Zakaria
• Trump’s dangerous AI nationalism | NonZero | Robert Wright
• The world’s appetite for oil may be about to shrink | GZERO | Ian Bremmer
• The charisma and catastrophe of Hasan Nasrallah | Middle East Uncovered | Faisal Saeed Al Mutar
• The end of the blockbuster | No Mercy/No Malice | Scott Galloway
• AI as a ‘normal technology’ would still be amazing | Faster, Please! | James Pethokoukis