Rob Calvert

Urologist @nhsUHLG | Education @BAUSUrology | Interested in technology in general | Father of 4 | views my own

[Rob Calvert @RobCalvert18]

We have recoded BAUS on Demand to improve functionality. Previous conference videos for @BAUSurology members. The views and likes counters are now working. A lot more content coming soon. Check it out:

https://t.co/NxXxqTEfmA

[NEJM @NEJM]

Presented at #ESMO26:

In patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer, event-free survival at 24 months was 63.5% with perioperative durvalumab plus neoadjuvant enfortumab vedotin as compared with 45.1% with surgery alone. Full phase 3 VOLGA trial results: https://t.co/9Eyzy0GnQq

@myESMO

[Mustafa Suleyman @mustafasuleyman]

Our MAI Diagnostic system is now 1.7x more accurate than physicians in the ED, even when they have access to the web to look things up.

It's also lower cost & does fewer medical tests to get to its diagnosis.

Published in the journal Science today...

[Rob Calvert @RobCalvert18]

Tesla Roadster 2 SpaceX package

[Sundar Pichai @sundarpichai]

Today @TheLancet published our AMIE study with @BIDMC_Medicine, the first prospective study of patient-facing conversational diagnostics in a real clinic.

AMIE is a research system people can chat with before doctors appointments. Testing AMIE outside the lab with real urgent care patients showed how technology can help gather medical histories safely. Clinicians reported that the summaries helped them prepare for visits in 75% of cases and influenced their approach to care in more than half. AMIE’s differential diagnoses also matched the doctors’ final diagnoses 90% of the time giving clinicians more time to focus on patient care.

It’s Google’s first-ever paper in The Lancet’s main journal!

[Gavin Purcell @gavinpurcell]

i'm still not sure people are fully getting how good opus 5.5

i gave my claude agent fig access to the runway MCP and told it to make a 'high-end netflix style documentary about superintelligence for normies' and...

it came back with this

[Samuel Hume @DrSamuelBHume]

Silver linings in the GRAIL trial:

1. More cancers were genuinely found at earlier stages.

2. More stage IV cancers were detected initially, and then fewer with subsequent screening rounds - suggesting that screening caught (and helped treat) cancers early. With more follow-up time, the benefit may get even clearer.

3. More cancers were detected by screening and fewer clinically.

4. Fewer cancers presented as emergencies.

Overall a negative trial, but a massive step in the right direction (and some feat, with 142,250 people randomized!).

[Shekhar Biyani @shekharbiyani]

Are you a urology resident looking to hone your core procedural and non-technical skills? Only a few places remain for the upcoming @UrologyBootCamp. Get 30+ hours of intense, hands-on simulation training covering TURP, TURBT, ureteroscopy, and emergency scenarios. @ESRUrology

[Alastair Lamb @LambAlastair]

Just out, 1st two in tranche of 10 papers from #PPCG
@Nature_NPJ

👥n=2021 total pts
🧬n=1001 WGS (1209 samples)
🖨n=1292 RNA-seq (1594)
🏷n=1490 methyl (1928)
🗓F/u=7yrs
🚀mets=132

🎯 85% of #PCa defined by 8 #MutationalProcesses

https://t.co/utykdmJKlz
https://t.co/rno0mDFxXz

[Demis Hassabis @demishassabis]

With AlphaFold we mapped the protein universe - now with AlphaGenome Atlas we’re charting the human genome. It can predict the impact of all 9 billion possible single-letter DNA variants, helping scientists better understand disease. Freely available for academic research: https://t.co/Gsy6lW3z6O

[The BMJ @bmj_latest]

"Rotational training is an obvious target for reform. The answer is not to abolish rotations—different hospitals provide experiences that others cannot, but doctors should rotate when there is an educational need, not as an end in itself."
@DrAsifQasim
https://t.co/kDteSpkcok

[Prof. Eliot Jacobson @EliotJacobson]

Breaking News!
Code: y-Axis Alert!

As of August 5th, global sea-surface temperatures just set a new preliminary record high of 21.20°C. This breaks the previous record high of 21.17°C set on April 24, 2024.

And yes, I had to extend the y-axis to plot this.

[Urology Gold Journal @urogoldjournal]

Prescribing vaginal estrogen to women with rUTI halves the risk of hospital admission and reduces sepsis incidence. Consideration of estrogen therapy could be crucial in reducing serious adverse outcomes and improving patient management strategies. https://t.co/P050m8HuWj

[NEJM @NEJM]

𝐅𝐢𝐛𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐲𝐚𝐥𝐠𝐢𝐚: 𝐄𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐒𝐞𝐥𝐟-𝐂𝐚𝐫𝐞

Given that patients may believe that pain always involves observable tissue damage or inflammation, reassurance that pain can also be related to problems with central nervous system (CNS) processing is often needed. Patient education includes messaging that fibromyalgia is chronic and noncurable but manageable and not life threatening, that treatment focuses on calming and resetting a hypersensitive CNS, and that nonpharmacologic self-care strategies play an important role in promoting health.

Pain self-care occurs outside the medical office, in the context of family, friends, and community. Self-management strategies are health-promoting lifestyle changes that can increase positive affect and calm CNS hypersensitivity (seen in figure). Because each strategy involves the formation of a new habit, consistent use of the strategy is needed to produce the desired benefits. Encouragement from the provider team at follow-up visits can help with habit formation and self-care maintenance. A meta-analysis of randomized, controlled trials that examined many different self-care interventions for managing fibromyalgia supports the use of self-care in reducing pain, increasing functioning, and modulating mood over the short and long terms.

Learn more in the Clinical Practice article “Fibromyalgia” by David A. Williams, PhD, and Daniel J. Clauw, MD: https://t.co/R8F2hC2bQL

[Tom Bartlett @tom_nhs]

While parliament argues about whether to keep Palantir, two Nature papers show agentic AI systems outperforming physicians in emergency and outpatient settings. The FDP is the only operational platform that could provide the foundation.

https://t.co/v3PXaOKbca

[The Humanoid Hub @TheHumanoidHub]

A stunning piece of engineering!!

1X unveils the new humanoid hand for NEO

- 25 degrees of freedom: 22 fully actuated in the fingers and palm, plus 3 at the wrist.
- The DoF are distributed anatomically rather than evenly, deliberately biased toward a thumb that genuinely opposes the fingers.
- In-house tendon-driven, quasi-direct-drive running low gear ratios of ~5:1 to 15:1 vs the typical 100:1–200:1.
- Motors live in the forearm and pull tendons through the wrist. This keeps the hand light and its inertia low while producing high forces.

Sensing

- All 25 DoF are natively force-controlled and fully backdrivable. Every joint doubles as a force sensor.
- Very important, closed-loop proprioception: it always knows its own pose and effort without looking.
- Tactile skin across the fingertips and surfaces measuring contact and shear. This helps with adaptive gripping in real time.

Safety and durability

- IP68 waterproof and food-safe, so it can wash its own hands.
- Compliant by construction: the low gear ratios, tendon drive, and low distal inertia let external impacts safely backdrive the fingers. It yields when hit by a hammer or caught in a drawer.
- Full finger assemblies validated to millions of cycles.

Manufacturing

- Deep vertical integration: in-house motors, custom electronics, and tendon systems.
- Hundreds built already, with capacity to produce 10,000 hands this year.

"An API to the Physical World"

[Rob Calvert @RobCalvert18]

The Best of BAUS Special edition of the Journal of Clinical Urology is available online. BAUS members can access this through the BAUS website. Check out the new articles, reviews and audits.

https://t.co/99dr7c1QCO

[Professor Chris Whitty @CMO_England]

A new study shows HPV vaccination in England has led to the number of deaths from cervical cancer falling to zero in vaccinated women under 25.

Please encourage all eligible children to get vaccinated.

https://t.co/YuX2BCR6gz