Catching cancer early is key to helping patients get better outcomes. Artificial intelligence (AI) tools have shown potential in spotting cancer early, but we still don’t know much about how to best use the patient history data stored in electronic health records (EHRs). This review looks at the current methods used to predict cancer using this kind of long-term data and offers advice on how to improve these tools. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12874-025-02473-w Read the full paper here.