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

🧪 Irish practice management system Socrates, a part of Lanas, is working with intelligent diagnostic informatics provider Clinisys to deliver laboratory test ordering and distribution for GP practices across Ireland. The new electronic lab ordering integration enables GPs to request blood tests and other laboratory investigations directly within the platform.

👴 A Technology Enabled Care programme is being launched by the West Midlands Combined Authority to help older and vulnerable people across the West Midlands stay safe in their own homes for longer. The technology includes motion sensors, cameras, GPS smart watches and virtual care devices that provide round-the-clock monitoring and rapid alerts if something goes wrong.

🩻 Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has completed a CT upgrade across its Basingstoke, Winchester and Andover sites standardising its scanners with Canon Medical to speed up imaging, improve patient flow, and future-proof services. The trust has also implemented Canon’s Vitrea Enterprise Imaging solution to provide a centralised imaging infrastructure across sites.

🤖 Specialist healthcare provider LivingCare Group has announced the roll-out of AI technology, Deep Resolve, to strengthen diagnostic imagery capabilities, improve scan quality, speed and patient experience. By shortening time spent in the scanner, the technology improves appointment availability, overall scanning capacity, and patient comfort.

🧘‍♂️Suicide prevention charity Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) has launched the free app, CALMzone, which uses evidence-based tools to support people with mental health issues such as low mood, stress and anxiety. It was gifted to the charity by Mind Ease, a social enterprise that aims to make evidence-based support for anxiety easier to access.

📞 Smart telephony solutions provider Exchange Communications has upgraded the telecom solution in place across the NHS Lanarkshire facilities. The upgrade is intended to deliver a better customer service experience, full integration of the critical National Sexual Health System (NaSH) database, better visibility of contacts, and more efficient reporting.

❓ Did you know that?

Aide Health has published a report warning that healthcare systems cannot meet rising demand through clinic appointments alone and calls for patient self-management to become the foundation of scalable care.

The report argues that chronic disease is driving the majority of healthcare pressure, while many services remain built around episodic, provider-led models that rely on finite clinical time.

With workforces shrinking and costs rising, Aide Health says self-management is now the only realistic path to sustainability, particularly as evidence shows over 80% of long-term condition care already takes place outside the clinic.

The report draws on NHS workforce projections, published research, and implementation data from Aide Health’s NHS programmes.

It highlights a widening gap between what health systems are expected to deliver and the workforce available to provide it. NHS projections estimate a shortfall of between 260,000 and 360,000 staff by 2036/37.

Ian Wharton, founder and chief executive of Aide Health, and co-author of the report, said: “Healthcare cannot scale through appointments alone. What determines outcomes is what happens between clinic visits.

“Self-management is already where most long-term condition care happens, but it still isn’t treated as the core strategy.

“If we want sustainable healthcare, we must design around patients as active partners in their own care.”

📖 What we’re reading

An opinion piece in the BMJ, published on 12 January 2026, outlines how the development of a UK Health Data Research Service (HDRS), backed by a £600m investment from the government and Wellcome, could be pivotal to harnessing health data for public benefit.

The HDRS is intended to create a single, secure gateway to health and care data to enable research while maintaining data protection and public trust.

Co-authors, Iain Buchan, associate pro vice chancellor for innovation at the University of Liverpool, and Andrew Morris, director of Health Data Research UK, say that achieving this gateway would fuel discovery science, clinical trials, AI innovation, and economic growth.

However, they argue that for it to be successful the UK must convert its fragmented health data legacy into a coherent and efficient system.

“This is no small task, and there’s currently little clarity over the functions the HDRS will fulfil to achieve its aims, how they will be implemented, how data governance will work, or what to expect as researchers, clinicians, or citizens.

“However, there are strong regional, national, and international examples, grounded in real world connectivity, that we can build on.

“Health systems in several UK regions are already using data to improve care, planning, and research together, through continuous learning loops that link data generation, insight, and action.

“These places have managed to maintain public trust in data uses and rapidly respond to insights generated from data collectively across organisations,” the article says.

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