NEWS AND VIEWS 12 October 2026 From a single night of sleep, AI tools can uncover physiological patterns linked to disease and mortality that are missed by conventional sleep measures. By Sleep is essential for health, and disrupted sleep is a common feature of many diseases1. Growing evidence suggests that changes in sleep can emerge before a disease is diagnosed2,3, raising the possibility that sleep contains early signals of future health.

Two publications from this year — one in Nature Communications by Bilal et al.4 and one in Nature Medicine by Thapa et al.5 — suggest that sleep data hold substantially more information about health than clinicians and researchers currently extract from them. doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-03207-8 References Shah, A. S. et al. Am. J. Lifestyle Med. https://doi.org/10.1177/15598276251346752 (2025). Article Google Scholar Ramos, A.

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6, 482–490 (2025). Article PubMed Google Scholar Bilal, E. et al. Nature Commun.

17, 7603 (2026). Article PubMed Google Scholar Thapa, R. et al. Nature Med.

32, 752–762 (2026). Article PubMed Google Scholar Rundo, J. V.

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30, 2648–2656 (2024). Article PubMed Google Scholar Download references Competing Interests The author declares no competing interests. Related Articles Read the paper: A foundation model for sleep-based risk stratification and clinical outcome Read the paper: A multimodal sleep foundation model for disease prediction Deep sleep helps the heart to heal Data from smart watches reveal early signs of insulin resistance See all News & Views Physiology Personalized medicine Technology Machine learning Latest on: Physiology Personalized medicine Technology Revealed: how this common gut microbe protects against heart disease News 07 OCT 26 Alveolar stem cells transdifferentiate to drive bronchiolar regeneration Article 07 OCT 26 Scientists take a radiometer for a spin in a hot-air balloon News & Views 06 OCT 26 Is exposomics the key to making personalized medicine a reality? Spotlight 30 SEP 26 Open data is key to genomics research — if the information can be kept safe World View 12 MAY 26 Precision medicine without equity is just stratified inequality Correspondence 05 MAY 26 Private, offline and yours: how to search the literature with local AI systems Technology Feature 12 OCT 26 UAE completes Arab world's first solo space probe – and sets course for an asteroid News 08 OCT 26 Why we must advocate for proper care on the frontlines of the Ebola outbreak Spotlight 07 OCT 26