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

🫁Brainomix, a producer of AI-powered imaging tools in stroke and lung fibrosis, has announced the launch of its Brainomix 360 Next Generation platform. The platform and feature upgrade provides a net water uptake capability using routine non-contrast CT scans, enhanced DICOM viewing capabilities, and AI-driven, patient-specific insights.

🔬 A bowel cancer screening test created in the north east is now being rolled out for patients across west Yorkshire and the Humber and Bristol. The test, designed by a team of scientists from Newcastle Hospitals and Newcastle University, allows improved and faster testing for Lynch syndrome, a hereditary condition which brings increased risk of certain types of cancer, including colorectal.

♻ Irish-founded sustainability platform Nocomed has secured €650,000 (£565,000) in seed funding to support the development and scale-up of its platform. Investors include Barry Comerford, the founder of Sauleen Holdings and Cambus Medical, software angel investor Edmund Wilson (co-founder of Titian Software) and Enterprise Ireland.

🤰 The Perinatal Institute has launched MiRecord, an electronic version of its hand-held maternity notes. The system can be used offline and features shared care, emergency care access, risk alerts and prompts, and enables mothers to have all relevant information about their care in real time.

✅ Cambridge-based digital diagnostics company PocDoc has joined UK NEQAS’ Centre for Clinical Chemistry, the internationally recognised quality assurance scheme. UK NEQAS is used by the NHS to independently verify the accuracy of diagnostic testing. Participation involves regular blind sample testing against gold-standard reference values.

🤖 Enterprise automation and AI-driven solutions provider Digital Workforce has announced a deal with the US-based Academic Medical Centre. Under the new contract, Digital Workforce will support the AMC in reducing workforce pressures by modernising and migrating its on-premise automation infrastructure with more than 100 bots to a secure, scalable cloud environment.

❓ Did you know that?

A coalition of clinicians, patients, charities, employers, insurers and health technology leaders has published an open letter to health secretary Wes Streeting, welcoming the publication of the National Cancer Plan, while urging urgent action to ensure it delivers meaningful change for people living with and beyond cancer.

The open letter, coordinated by virtual cancer clinic Perci Health, is in response to the government’s plan, which aims to restore cancer waiting times by 2029 and increase five-year survival to 75% by 2035.

While contributors welcomed investment in digital infrastructure, they warned against simply digitising existing pathways.

Paddy Rehill, chief technology officer at Perci Health said: “Technology should enable proactive, personalised and risk-stratified care.

“Outcomes must be measured in ways that reflect real life, not just clinical milestones.”

The group argues that cancer must be treated as a population-wide, long-term condition, affecting not just hospitals but families, workplaces and the wider economy, and that whole-pathway, whole-person care must become standard if the plan is to succeed.

📖 What we’re reading

The National Institute for Health and Care Research rapid service evaluation team has published findings from the first phase of their evaluation of ambient voice technology (AVT) in the NHS.

AVT uses conversational AI to capture and structure clinical encounters in real time, with the potential to reduce administrative burden, support more timely records and improve communication between clinicians and patients.

In the analysis, published by Nuffield Health on 4 February, the co-authors highlight that although adoption of the technology is accelerating across healthcare, existing evidence is fragmented, often industry-led, or limited to evaluations of individual products.

“Future research is needed to provide longer-term, national evidence on the impact of AVT in practice and across clinical contexts and build consistent approaches to measuring impact to allow for comparisons,” the report says. 

🚨 Upcoming events

• 24-25 March, Birmingham NEC – Digital Health Rewired 2026