Digital Health Coffee Time Briefing ☕

Your morning summary of digital health news, information and events to know about if you want to be “in the know”.

👇 News

🔬 University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust has opened a research centre focusing on personalised medicine. Based at University Hospital Coventry, the facility will enable researchers to better understand complex conditions like cancer, diabetes and pre-eclampsia and work towards identifying new treatments. It is being supported by a £1 million infrastructure grant from the National Institute for Health and Care Research.

💰 Spire Healthcare has invested £3.5 million in new diagnostic technology, which will enable Spire to deliver up to 4,000 MRI appointments per year to people living in Yorkshire. The investment includes new AI technology that delivers higher-quality images and more accurate diagnoses, as well as larger, faster scanners. In addition to the X-ray and ultrasound services, the new MRI scanner will support general surgery and women’s health, as well as orthopaedic, neurology and urology investigations. 

✨ Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust has opened its £12.5m, purpose-built endoscopy unit in Tiverton to patients. The new facility specialises in diagnostic endoscopies and is expected to provide an additional 5,600 endoscopies per year once fully up and running. This will enable Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust and North Devon District Hospital to focus on patients with more complex needs who cannot access Tiverton.

🤝 Doncaster and Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (DBTH) will partner with Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (STH) to implement Oracle’s Cerner Millennium electronic patient record (EPR). STH secured a 10-year, £85 million contract with Oracle for the EPR in February 2024. It was initially due to go live in November 2024, before being pushed back to July 2025. DBTH is currently using a combination of digital and paper-based processes.

📲 Virgin Media O2 and Telecare Cardiff have launched a trial to support telecare customers’ transition to digital landline services. The project in Wales is part of Virgin Media O2’s wider plans to test new and improved ways of helping vulnerable customers move to digital services ahead of the wider analogue switchover. While most customers will simply need to change how their landline phone is plugged in, Virgin Media O2 and Telecare Cardiff will provide additional support to customers using telecare devices like pendant and fall alarms.

❓Did you know?

March 2025 was the busiest on month record for the number of tests and checks carried out on patients, according to data from NHS England, published on 15 May 2025.

Community diagnostic hubs helped to deliver almost 2.5m checks – an extra half a million diagnostic tests compared to in March 2019.

In total, the NHS delivered more than 100,000 additional treatments in March 2025 compared to March 2024, with a quarter of a million fewer waiting longer than 18 weeks for care.

Stephen Powis, national medical director at NHS England, said: “While huge pressure on services remain, these figures show that the elective care reform plan is bearing fruit for patients across the country with the NHS already reforming to work in new ways to deliver for patients.”

📖 What we’re reading

‘Curb your enthusiasm: what does the evidence tell us about using AI in radiology diagnostics?‘, published by the Nuffield Trust on 13 May 2025, explores findings from a systematic review of 140 international studies on the use of AI in radiology.

Authors Emma Dodsworth and Rachel Lawrence note that early studies have suggested AI can support diagnostic accuracy and workflow efficiency, particularly when used by less experienced staff. However, they caveat this by pointing out that most of these studies were carried out in simulated environments, limiting confidence in how these tools perform in real clinical settings.

The review also raises concerns about false positives – cases where AI incorrectly flags healthy patients as unwell – which can create considerable anxiety for patients and place unnecessary pressure on services.

Notably, the review found little evidence on how patients experience AI-supported care. While use of AI in diagnostics is expanding, none of the studies reporting on clinical use included patient perspectives. 

🚨 Upcoming events

16–19 June, Amsterdam — HLTH Europe 2025