MILTON, a new computer algorithm, looks at patient test results often collated by GPS to locate patterns in the data and predict with high levels of assurance a potential diagnosis of a disease just years later.

The tech - which was developed by AstraZeneca - is supposed to increase the creation of better treatments that get to the root of the issue. They also hope to make the data used to generate the tool available to other people doing similar work.

The lead researcher Dr Slave Petrovski told Sky News: "For many of these diseases, by the time they manifest clinically and the individual goes to the doctor because of an ailment or visible observation that is far down the line from when the disease process began.

"There may have been a whole cascade of events that happened in the blood before it was symptomatic.

"We can pick up signatures in an individual that are highly predictive of developing diseases like Alzheimer's, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), kidney disease and many others."

MILTON looked at data from 67 routine clinical biomarkers like blood and urine tests, and information from blood pressure and respiratory assessments.

In addition, they also studied data supplied from 50,000 Biobank volunteers’ blood plasma proteins.

The ability to predict diseases was rated as “exceptional” for roughly 121 different kinds and “highly predictive” for 1,091, according to the findings shared in the journal Nature Genetics.