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  

👴 Clinical and care leaders from Mid and South Essex Integrated Care System (ICS) are working as part of an ‘Ageing Well’ stewardship to ensure vulnerable residents receive better joined up care, earlier. Over 8000 people with frailty and dementia have been added to an electronic register and a new hotline connecting residents with specialists takes over 350 calls each month, reducing unnecessary hospital admissions by up to 80%. Read the case study.  

👩‍⚕️ An AI tool that can predict 10-year risk of deadly heart attacks, could transform treatment for patients who undergo CT scans to investigate chest pain, according to British Heart Foundation-funded research presented today at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions in Philadelphia. In the first real-world trial of the AI tool, it was found to improve treatment for up to 45 per cent of patients.  

📷 Scientists have developed a laser camera that can read a person’s heartbeat at a distance and pinpoint signs that they might be suffering from cardiovascular illnesses. The system – which exploits AI and quantum technologies – could transform the way we monitor our health, say researchers at Glasgow University. 

🧠 The first digital atlas showing how the human brain develops in the womb has been published by a global research team led by the University of Oxford. A team of over 200 researchers around the world, involving multiple health and scientific institutions, led by the University of Oxford, has today published, in the journal Nature, the first digital atlas showing the dynamics of normative maturation of each hemisphere of the fetal brain between 14 and 31 weeks’ gestation – a critical period of human development. 

🗃 Culmination Bio, a company building the largest disease-agnostic patient data intelligence platform, today announced a $10 million investment from Merck Global Health Innovation Fund (Merck GHI) and Amgen Ventures. As a spinoff from Intermountain Health, Culmination Bio maintains exclusive rights to a physical library and cloud-based data lake covering over 40 years of de-identified patient electronic health records and biospecimen data. As the most extensive data lake of its kind, it enables biopharmaceutical companies to gain important insights critical to facilitating diagnostic and therapeutic development. This funding will allow Culmination Bio to further develop its exclusive Intelligence Platform and expand its commercial growth. 

❓ Did you know that? 

Koa Health, a hybrid mental health care company, has announced findings from a comprehensive study published in the Journal of Affective Disorders, investigating the crucial link between sleep disruption and treatment outcomes for Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD).  The study, conducted over 12-weeks, revealed that two-thirds of participants reported significant insomnia symptoms at baseline, highlighting a disproportionately high prevalence of sleep disruption among individuals seeking treatment for BDD. 

📖 What we’re reading 

How to holistically evaluate artificial intelligence (AI) tools in healthcare remains a challenge. Frameworks like regulatory guidelines and institutional approaches have focused narrowly on the tool’s performance alone, but tools are not neutral, but reflect values. A “normative framework” for AI tools in healthcare supplies the practical guidance for operationalizing our values that incorporates not just the tool’s properties but the systems surrounding its use to achieve benefit, the journal Patterns reports. 

🚨 This week’s events 

6 December 8:30-9:45am, The King’s Fund, London – Future proofing the NHS workforce: making health care a more attractive career  

6 December 12:30-13:30 – Digital Health Webinar: How to maximise your Electronic Patient Record investment to effectively advance healthcare  

8 December 12:30-13:30 – Digital Health Webinar: Accelerating Healthcare Insights – Rapidly unlocking value from your data