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  

???? Representatives from across the health and care sector descended upon Birmingham last month to take part in an inaugural Stakeholder Conference at Conference Aston and learn from the transformational health innovations and projects spearheaded by Health Innovation West Midlands (HIWM, formerly known as the West Midlands Academic Health Science Network, WMAHSN). The projects showcased at the event included one to create tools and resources that systems can utilise to enable improvement in heart failure care, a project with 1,679 care homes across the West Midlands to support the training, adoption and sustainability of deterioration management tools, and the creation of a Patient Safety Incident Response Framework.  

???? Visionable, a UK health tech company known for its advanced collaboration platform, has secured $5.5 million in funding to propel its expansion into the US market. This follows the company’s remarkable achievements in the NHS and national prison service and has been further fortified through a strategic partnership with the telecommunications powerhouse, Verizon. 

???? Applications are now OPEN for the FemTech Lab Spring 2024 cohort! If you’re a passionate founder innovating for a better future of Women’s Health then FemTech Lab wants to hear from you! Enjoy 12 weeks of acceleration with 500+ expert mentors, investors and ecosystem partners. Have the chance to pitch to investors during London Tech Week at the DECODING THE FUTURE OF WOMEN conference. Apply for the seventh FemTech Lab Cohort now by visiting the FemTech website and clicking “Apply Now” at the very top. 

???? One of the UK’s leading digital providers of specialist autism, ADHD and mental health services has published a new scoping review into available mobile diagnostic apps for autism – which offers an important reflection on innovation trends in the field as a whole. Healios works in partnership with the NHS, offering pioneering solutions to the growing demands in autism and ADHD care. 

Google is launching new healthcare AI models that aim to assist clinicians and researchers in conducting intricate studies, summarizing clinician-patient interactions and more, CNBC reported December 13. The suite of AI models, dubbed MedLM, comprises a large and a medium-sized AI model, both based on Med-PaLM 2, a language model trained on medical data initially announced by Google in March. As of Dec 13, the AI model is available for eligible Google Cloud customers in the US. 

❓ Did you know that? 

Healthcare ranks among the top five industries most affected by unpaid invoices in 2023, with business owners suggesting around £1,448 are wrapped up in unpaid invoices, according to a new study by Capital on Tap. 

???? What we’re reading 

The NHS in England faces an extremely challenging winter and the prospect of very low growth in its budget thereafter. The Chancellor’s autumn statement gave priority to cutting some taxes. It also outlined public spending plans so tight they were described by one think tank as “implausible”. The effect of these decisions will be to focus the minds of NHS leaders on immediate financial and operational issues. While understandable, the risk is that short term imperatives will crowd out time and energy to deliver long term ambitions to transform health and care in line with the aims of the Health and Care Act 2022. Integrated care systems should be supported to deliver their plans as financial challenges are tackled, writes Chris Ham in this week’s BMJ. 

???? This week’s events 

15 December – Digital Health’s Christmas Party ????????⛄????