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

📣 NHS England is looking at drafting a programme focused on the future of patient feedback, and is seeking market input. It plans to invest £400,000 in 25/26, pending approval, for a ‘Future of patient feedback: a roadmap for measurement and improvement’ programme  in line with the 10 year health plan.

👶 Canterbury Christ Church University is planning to launch a new midwifery degree, with AI, virtual healthcare and healthcare inequalities all on the curriculum. The course is designed to address the demands of modern midwifery practice and prepare students for future advances in healthcare.

💻 NHS Shared Business Services is working on plans for a Technology Enabled Care services framework, that will support proactive and remote models of care. The published market notice highlights two NHS-specific lots: remote clinical monitoring and intelligent activity monitoring.

🏅 Corti, a healthcare AI infrastructure provider, has achieved the ISO/IEC 2701 certification, the globally recognised framework for information security management. The company received independent validation from A-LIGN, and was able to demonstrate that its specialist AI models can meet the same security requirements as the clinical environments they serve.

🖊️ A market discovery exercise is being carried out by Digital Health and Care Wales, exploring ambient voice technology solutions that are able to meet the needs of general practice and primary care in the region. The contract is expected to start from 2026.

❓Did you know?

Private doctors are slower at adopting AI scribes, despite being more confident than their NHS peers in the technology’s potential, according to research from Tandem Health.

Its ‘Time to Care’ report found that 45% of private doctors anticipate that AI scribes will become standard in healthcare.

Despite this, just 12% of private practitioners are already using the technology – nearly half that of NHS GPs. Tandem Health reports that 21% of doctors in the NHS are already adopting the tool.

Dr Ian Robertson, UK director at Tandem Health, commented: “The difference is understandable — private practices are more fragmented, working with diverse systems and smaller budgets, so change takes longer than in a centralised system.

“With the right support, private providers can move quickly, tailoring innovation to patient expectations.

“And in the NHS, early roll-outs of ambient scribes already show the appetite for tools that ease the administrative burden.”

📖 What we’re reading

A briefing by The Health Foundation, published in August, analyses the history of changes to NHS management, in light of the government’s plan to abolish NHS England and merge it into the Department of Health and Care (DHSC).

The authors, Dr Agnes Arnold-Forster and Dr Hugh Alderwick, examine the lessons that can be learned, as the management of the NHS comes back under closer political control and analyse the structure and politics of the NHS since its inception through to modern day.

They argue that the NHS has long-grappled with achieving the right level of political involvement, with multiple attempts to split policy formulation and implementation since the 1980s.

It is vital that national policymakers maintain some split between policy and management; while the relationship between central and local decision making should be clarified, and new routes developed to deliver independence into the policy process, the authors add.

“Abolishing NHS England and bringing the day-to-day management of the health service back into the DHSC – under closer ministerial control – reflects perennial challenges in the politics and management of the NHS.

“The timing, communication and planning of the government’s decision leaves much to be desired,” they write.

🚨Upcoming events

19 September 2025, online event – AI and productivity gains