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

💭 BAXCQC has launched a cloud-based tool to help healthcare providers stay inspection-ready under the CQC’s Single Assessment Framework. The BAXCQC Compliance Platform is an online system that supports organisations self-assess and manage their compliance against the 34 Quality Statements in the current framework.

🎤 Speechmatics has built a medical transcription model that it claims can reduce clinical keyword errors by 50% when compared to the next best solution, and reduces overall word errors by 17%. The tool has been optimised for multi-speaker dialogue and for all accents.

📺Airwave Healthcare has deployed its MyCareTV service to The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre NHS Foundation Trust’s Liverpool in-patient hospital. It has also provided 150 intuitive screens for patient rooms. As well as providing patient entertainment it can also be used to deliver condition-specific digitised content and mindfulness videos.

💷 Innovate UK has awarded a £300,000 grant to Reinhart which will be used to scale its work in preventative mental health. Set to benefit, is the company’s flagship VR-EMDR trauma therapy programme which has the potential to reduce treatment times, saving the NHS up to £800m annually.

📍 The National Rehabilitation Centre (NRC) plans to roll out real-time location services technology, following a trial at City Hospital in Nottingham. Kontakt.io will provide the technology, which will make it easier for staff to locate equipment and patients when the NRC opens its doors.

❓Did you know?

National security concerns are increasingly driving innovation within the healthcare sector rather than constraining it, according to findings from Ayming’s ‘2026 International Innovation Barometer’.

The global survey polled 850 senior innovation, finance and technology leaders, including 120 from within healthcare.

It revealed that 75% of healthcare providers have innovated in direct response to national security threats in the past five years. Nearly all healthcare providers (94%) factor security risks into their strategic planning, and 80% anticipate increasing investments in security-related innovations over the next two years.

Healthcare professionals identify cybersecurity as both the largest national security risk (54%) and the top innovation opportunity (51%).

Reflecting this focus, nearly a quarter (23%) of healthcare providers are developing dual-use technologies that serve both civilian and defence markets.

Njy Rios, partner at Ayming UK, said: “National security risks have shifted from a specialist concern to a core driver of innovation.

“The urgent need to protect infrastructure, supply chains, and digital systems is encouraging businesses to align R&D priorities with security goals, shaping a new era where innovation is measured not only by commercial impact but also by its contribution to stability and resilience.”

📖 What we’re reading

One year after the government pledged to cut NHS waiting times, an analysis by the Health Foundation suggests that it may miss its target of having 92% of routine operations completed within 18 weeks, by the end of the parliamentary term in 2029.

According to the report, the current NHS waiting list stands at 7.4 million, down from 7.6m when Labour took office in July 2024.

The proportion of patients seen within 18 weeks has improved slightly from 58.8% to 61.3% over the past year. However, if current trends continue, waiting times are expected to remain above the target, with patients potentially waiting up to 20 weeks on average by 2029.

The Health Foundation noted that just over one-third of NHS trusts are making the progress needed to meet the government’s waiting time strategy. Growth in patient referrals, which increased by 1.5% between August 2024 and July 2025, may require even faster improvement in treatment rates to meet the goal.

The Health Foundation estimates that if the trend continues 92% of waits would last less than 20.3 weeks by the end of parliament.

🚨Upcoming events

15 October 2025, online- The Role of Networking and Mentorship in Career Growth