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

🧠 People across the UK living with health conditions like bipolar disorder, cancer and neurodegenerative conditions will have better access to vital medicines after an investment of more than £80 million into the UK’s life sciences sector. The investments came through the government’s Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund and aims to strengthen regional clusters and create new career opportunities.

🟠 Health tech firm ORB has been named a North West regional finalist in the UK StartUp Awards 2026 in the Technology StartUp of the Year category. Founded in 2022 by Dr Danny Glover and Dr Steven Whatmough, the business has developed a health technology platform that helps bring fragmented health information together, enabling clinicians to access and use information more effectively.

🩸 Roche Diagnostics has announced that its Accu-Chek SmartGuide continuous glucose monitoring system is now reimbursable on the NHS, giving adults with diabetes easier access to the technology. The system uses AI to analyse glucose patterns to forecast levels and prompts users to take action if their glucose is expected to drop below a safe range.

🫀 Gloucestershire Royal Hospital has expanded its cardiac catheterisation lab provision because of a growing demand for pacemaker implantation. The hospital, part of Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, has installed Canon Medical’s specialist angiography X-ray system, the Alphenix Core +.

🔬 The Isle of Man has announced the 16 global finalists selected for its 2026 Health and Social Care Innovation Challenge, chosen from 125 entries across 25 countries. The finalists in the challenge, which aims to bring innovators directly into the health and care system, are developing technology spanning AI-powered clinical tools, digital platforms, preventative health technologies, and community-based care models.

❓ Did you know that?

More than a third of medical references generated by some widely used AI platforms may be fabricated, according to a study published in The Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

The research found that popular AI chatbots answering common surgical health questions sometimes produced references to sources that do not exist, known as ‘hallucinations’.

The authors warn that fabricated references undermine the patient’s ability to check whether information is accurate or evidence based as more users turn to AI tools to understand symptoms, explore diagnoses and seek medical advice.

The study identified large discrepancies between AI platforms in both the quantity and reliability of the references they produced. In the worst-performing models, more than a third (34%) of references were fabricated or unverifiable, while several others produced no hallucinated references at all.

Some fabricated citations closely resembled legitimate scientific literature, with plausible article titles, invented URLs, and attributions to reputable and well-known institutions such as the Mayo Clinic.

Users attempting to follow up these references may find they do not exist or that they fail to support the information provided – making it difficult to distinguish fabricated sources from genuine medical evidence, the authors add.

📖 What we’re reading

Dame Jennifer Dixon, chief executive of the Health Foundation, has written a blog, published on 15 April on GOV.UK, about the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency’s (MHRA) forthcoming strategy to enable safe and timely access to innovative technologies while maintaining public trust.

The MHRA aims to strengthen its approach to regulating adaptive AI, enhancing both pre-market evaluation and robust post-market surveillance, and ensuring that safety, performance and equity remain central as technologies evolve.

She writes: “Clearly these assessments of new technologies must include scrutiny of equity and bias, so that all patients can benefit. But as we develop this new system of AI governance, including evaluation and post-market surveillance, it’s also true that current access to health care is suboptimal – neither perfectly equitable nor perfectly safe.

“The big task ahead is to get better at demand signalling what are the highest priority technologies to be developed and tested, test them better, faster and more cheaply, and work out effective ways to spread them safely. All while keeping public and clinical support and trust high.

“This agenda is the number one priority to reform care in the UK.”

🚨 Upcoming events

• 28 April 2026, Online – Understanding the NHS Management and Leadership Framework in Practice
• 21 May 2026, Online – Scaling excellence through digital pathway standardisation