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 

✅ Node4, the cloud-led digital transformation Managed Services Provider (MSP), has announced that NHS Digital has renewed its Health and Social Care Network (HSCN) certification for a sixth consecutive year. As such, Node4’s network of UK-based data centres can continue to supply the country’s health and social care sector with HSCN and overlay services. This allows private and public healthcare providers to exchange data securely and access NHS applications — enabling them to deliver vital services at a national and regional level. 

💡 Care providers can now improve and assess their staff’s knowledge of data security using a new elearning resource, specifically designed for the care sector. Better Security, Better Care – the national programme supporting adult care providers with data security – has developed the course in response to a gap in the market. The course, which reinforces the Data Security Standards and the Care Certificate, includes four modules and one online assessment. Each module takes around 10 – 20 minutes to complete, and there is one single assessment covering topics from all four modules. Staff can complete the modules in any order and over the course of several days. Care managers, trainers and staff can access the course and corresponding user guides here. 

🎓 A team composed of medical students from local and overseas medical schools has proposed a standardised AI-centric medical curriculum to be implemented and taught in medical schools globally. The AI curriculum is designed for future health care practitioners and will comprise of four pillars—technical concepts, validation, ethics and appraisal. Such an AI-based curriculum will cater to the differing levels of familiarity and competency of the students, which the paper’s authors have classified as consumers, translators and developers.  

🏆 Delta Wellbeing has won a prestigious national care award for its work supporting patients in the community, preventing unnecessary hospital admissions. The company, which provides assistive technology and proactive monitoring and support for older and vulnerable people to live more independently, has won the Best Initiative in Care Award at the Caring UK Awards. 

👀 Medical device lobbying giant AdvaMed has named Peter Arduini, who leads GE HealthCare, the chair of its board of directors. The announcement coincides with the establishment of the lobbying group’s new division focused on policy issues for medical imaging technology; that group was formed just a couple months after it launched a digital health task force. The moves come as FDA heightens its evaluation of digital health tools. 

❓ Did you know that? 

The healthcare and life sciences sector has ranked mid-table out of other industries in website performance, dropping two places in comparison to rankings from last year, according to new research from web experts, Zengenti. Creators of CMS Contensis, Zengenti rolled out its annual ‘Big Players, Slow Web Pages’ campaign, analysing all FTSE 100 and 250 homepages to determine which industries and organisations have the best online presence and which currently lag behind. 

With an average performance score of 72, an average accessibility score of 86 and an average speed of 154ms, the healthcare and life sciences sector came in ninth place out of a total of 17 industries. 

📖 What we’re reading 

Digital health at the turn of 2024: Tracking developments along the innovation maturity curve – Rock Health Advisory use data to plot major developments in digital health along its innovation maturity curve to help strategy and innovation leaders find opportunities to be a first mover or understand where there is competitive pressure to catch up. 

🚨 This week’s events 

15 December – Digital Health’s Christmas Party 🎅🎄⛄🎁