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

🏆Innovate UK has announced the overall winner of the Agentic AI Pioneers Prize at an industry award ceremony. Danu Insights received £500,000 for its ‘Agentic Digital Twin Builder for the Life Sciences’ project. The national competition focused on three high-growth sectors: advanced manufacturing, health and life sciences, and the creative industries.

👨‍👩‍👧 Boutique Care Homes has launched a free digital knowledge platform built for the 5.8 million unpaid carers in the UK and the millions more families facing care decisions for a loved one. The Care Labs is a dedicated, standalone resource that educates and supports families and draws inspiration from the Barclays Digital Wings online learning platform.

🎓myTomorrows, a global health technology company that connects patients with pre-approval treatments, has announced a new partnership with Clínica Universidad de Navarra (CUN), an academic hospital affiliated with the University of Navarra in Spain. Through this collaboration, CUN is introducing AI-assisted patient trial matching, integrated within its electronic health record and operating as part of its controlled clinical environment.

💤 Non-invasive neuro-technology company Neurovalens has had its first product approved for sale in Europe and the UK after achieving EU Medical Device Regulation compliance for Modius Sleep, a treatment for insomnia. Based in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Neurovalens uses neuroscience and technology to address global health challenges across a range of at-home treatments in both metabolic and mental health.

💻 Bramacare has launched an AI-enabled platform specifically designed to aid eating disorder and rehabilitation services. AMY is designed to reduce fragmentation between care services and integrates physical health monitoring, risk stratification, multidisciplinary care planning, and regulatory compliance, and is built around the Medical Emergencies in Eating Disorders (MEED) guidelines.

🙍‍♂️ Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust has rolled out an AI-powered mental health platform to support staff wellbeing. The trust is deploying Aria, a digital wellbeing and therapy companion developed by Medstars, which provides staff with 24/7, confidential access to mental health support and guidance.

❓ Did you know that?

A £5 million UK-led programme to overcome long-standing barriers to early detection has been launched to accelerate the development and adoption of next-generation cancer diagnostics by bringing together industry, clinicians, patients, and technology leaders.

The Next Generation Cancer Diagnostics programme (NG-Dx), led by the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) and funded by the UK government’s Office for Life Sciences, will run for 18 months from January 2026.

Designed as a pre-competitive programme, NG-Dx combines technical delivery with structured industry and public engagement to ensure innovation translates into clinically relevant, trusted, and investable solutions.

Despite rapid advances in areas such as circulating tumour DNA, proteomics, and multi-omics analysis, many promising diagnostic technologies have struggled to progress beyond research settings. Fragmented development, unclear adoption pathway, and high commercial risk have slowed progress, even as half of cancers in the UK are still diagnosed too late for optimal treatment, the CPI states.

NG-Dx has been established to address these challenges directly, aligning scientific development with real-world clinical need, patient acceptability and industry investment readiness from the outset.

🎧What we’re listening to

Digital Care Hub recently hosted two webinars that brought together people from across adult social care to explore how technology is being used in practice, and the questions it raises.

The sessions looked at two linked issues – the first focusing on privacy and the use of home sensors, while the second explored choice and consent and how decisions about technology are made.

The first session focused on home sensors and monitoring technologies, and how they are experienced by people drawing on care, families, and staff, with Katie Thorn, director of innovation at the Digital Care Hub, saying: “What’s right for one person may not be right for another person, we can’t have a one-size-fits-all approach.”

The second dives into how consent works in practice when technology is introduced into someone’s life. Mark de Bernhardt-Lane, from the Local Government Association, speaks about how that choice is only meaningful if someone can say no without losing access to care.

🚨 Upcoming events

28 April 2026, Online – Understanding the NHS Management and Leadership Framework in Practice