Digital Health Coffee Time Briefing ☕

News

14 May 2026

September 18, 2025

Your morning summary of digital health news, information and events to know about if you want to be “in the know”.

👇 News

🤱FutureLife Group, a pan-European provider of fertility, IVF, and genetics services, has announced a partnership with Alife Health to adopt Alife’s AI platform for clinical decision support. The platform will be integrated into three clinics in the UK – CRGH in London, BCRM in Bristol, and Herts & Essex Fertility in Hertfordshire.

🏙 Powys Teaching Health Board has launched a website to help people affected by cancer access the ‘Improving the Cancer Journey’ programme, which brings together information on local support. It is designed for those newly diagnosed, undergoing treatment, recovering, adjusting to life beyond cancer, living with a palliative cancer diagnosis, bereaved, or supporting a family member or friend.

🫁 More than a million people with asthma are reportedly using combination inhalers, combine an inhaled steroid and a long-acting beta₂ agonist (LABA) medicine called formoterol, which relieves symptoms and tackles the underlying inflammation that causes attacks in the first place. A NICE analysis of NHS England data found around 1.09 million people were using combination inhalers without any standard inhaler between October and December 2025.

🔰 Technology company Nobi has launched Nobi Badge, a wearable designed to support better visibility and coordination of care delivery for caregivers. The Nobi Badge functions as a connected, sensor-enabled wearable that integrates directly with Nobi’s AI care platform. This allows providers to move beyond isolated data points and access actionable insight through an integrated system.

👨‍⚕️ A pair of entrepreneurs have raised £2.1 million in pre-seed funding to build Asterix Health, a workforce solution that hires UK-registered GPs to support primary care remotely. The funding will be used to accelerate onboarding of new NHS practices and expand Asterix’s network of remote GMC-registered GPs, including NHS-trained doctors returning to frontline care from abroad.

❓ Did you know that?

NHS Scotland is exploring options for the potential procurement of a multi-channel remote health monitoring (RHM) and communication solution.

The organisation is tendering for a contractor to support the delivery of enhanced care pathways, including home and mobile health monitoring.

RHM is a digitally enabled model of care that allows people to record, submit and share clinically relevant health information from their home or community setting. This enables health and care teams to monitor health status, support self-management and intervene proactively, reducing the need for routine face-to-face contact.

RHM can support management of long-term conditions to reduce escalation and prevent admissions, while supporting earlier discharge and hospital at home models where appropriate, according to Public Service Delivery Scotland.

A market research document associated with the tender has been downloaded 67 times at time of writing.

📖 What we’re reading

Louise Coupland, digital health and social care programme manager for Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland, has shared her opinions on the national roll out of MyCare.scot.

The article, published on 5 May, outlines the launch of a Scottish digital service, offering people choice, control, and easy access health and social care services.

She says the Scottish digital platform for health and social care was already three years behind Wales and seven behind the well-established NHS England app, so the launch deadline was non-negotiable and resulted in initial functionality of MyCare.scot being limited, falling short of many people’s expectation.

She adds: “The ALLIANCE’s Digital Team have been involved in many working groups, some stretching back years so I am hopeful that with clear messaging and expectation management, it could be the foundation to what will be a transformational digital service for Scotland.

“The focus being on not what the digital service is now, but what it could be given time, investment and development- a catalyst to changing how we provide, utilise and access health and social care information and services.”

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