Opinion Article by Guilherme Carvalho, Sales & Contracts Manager, Sectra.
A new £21 million fund for AI was announced by the UK government in June, with the intention of providing NHS trusts with at least some of the tools needed to deliver faster, more accurate diagnoses for patients.

The urgency to get these tools in place, means that many NHS trusts and imaging networks will now be engaged in developing bids, ahead of what is a tight September deadline.

Mahana Therapeutics, a leading provider of prescription digital therapeutics, announced today that the company has entered into a multi-million-dollar distribution and marketing partnership with the Consumer Health division of Bayer to commercialize digital therapeutics. Earlier this year, Bayer announced the launch of a new business unit focused on delivering new digitally enabled precision health products to market.

Health technology trade association ABHI has announced that specialist marketing, PR and communications agency Highland Marketing has joined its membership.

Highland Marketing has worked with technology providers throughout the health and care sector for more than two decades, helping to bring innovations to market and raise awareness of the positive impact technologies enable for clinical teams and patients.

Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust and Qure.ai have announced the early results of a pilot study using an innovative radiology AI solution to read and differentiate between normal and abnormal chest X-rays (CXRs).

qXR, a CE class IIb MDR cleared solution developed by Qure, was deployed with the hypothesis to categorise normal x-rays - approximately 40% of the caseload from GP and outpatient requests - and augment overall reporting efficiency.

The Department of Health and Social Care has just published a strategy for medical technology. The Highland Marketing advisory board asked what chief information officers need to know about it; and how they can make the most of the opportunities that will come from integrating device data with medical records.

Royal Philips (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHIA), a global leader in health technology, announced that the Philips-coordinated IMAGIO consortium [1] of clinical partners has been awarded a EUR 24 million Innovative Health Initiative (IHI) grant, complemented with additional resources and funding from industry partners [2], to carry out research into less invasive cancer treatments.

NHS Fife is working with Buddy Healthcare on a digital pre-op pathway, so orthopaedic patients can complete assessments on an app and clinicians can use the data to make the best possible use of outpatient clinic and theatre time.

The Scottish health board has adopted the digital platform, which it calls ELSIE (the Electronic Pre-Operative Assessment App).