Welcome to this latest edition of our international news in brief, where we take a look at some of the health tech news stories from across the globe to have caught our attention over the last few weeks.
Unity Health Toronto and Sinai Health collaboration to support EPR implementation
Unity Health Toronto is set to offer its support for Sinai Health’s Epic EPR implementation, building on learnings from its own Epic EPR launch in 2024.
Taking to LinkedIn, Unity Health Toronto said: “Guided by Unity Health’s award-winning Epic implementation, this partnership will give patients and care teams more seamless access to health information across organisations.”
Anthropic and Gates Foundation commit $200 million in support to programmes in areas including digital health
Anthropic and the Gates Foundation have announced $200 million in grants, Claude credits, and technical support for programmes in areas including global health and the life sciences.
“This commitment is central to Anthropic’s efforts to extend the benefits of AI in areas where markets alone will not,” Anthropic states. Work is also being done on the development of AI-related public goods like public health datasets and evaluation benchmarks, it continues, with nonprofits benefiting from discounted access to Claude AI.
The biggest area of focus will reportedly be on improving health outcomes in low and middle income countries, aiming to accelerate the development of new vaccines and therapies, as well as to support governments in using health data for better-informed decision making.
Anthropic shares plans to create connectors granting Claude AI direct access to other tools and platforms, along with benchmarks and evaluation frameworks helping researchers, developers, and governments to better understand how AI systems perform on health-related tasks. Work with the Gates Foundation will also look at exploring how AI can better support frontline health workers and patients in navigating diagnosis, treatment, and medical decision-making.
“We’ll also use Claude to advance research on high-burden and neglected diseases,” Anthropic notes. “Scientists already use Claude to detect patterns in systematic reviews and large datasets, and to screen potential drug and vaccine candidates. Our partnership with the Gates Foundation will extend this work to overlooked diseases, starting with polio, HPV, and eclampsia/preeclampsia.”
Australian Digital Health Agency publishes national framework for digital health standards
In what it refers to as “a significant milestone in the evolution of connected care”, the Australian Digital Health Agency has published its National Framework for Digital Health Standards.
The framework offers practical guidelines and insights into governance, standards development, and standards implementation across government agencies, health services, and industry partners.
In a LinkedIn post, chief digital officer Peter O’Halloran described the framework as “38 pages of pure joy”, adding: “Conformance built on consistent standards gives Australians confidence that digital health systems can work together as intended, and that the information healthcare providers rely on is timely, accurate, secure and clinically safe. The adoption of globally consistent clinical terminology is a key foundation for the safe and appropriate use of artificial intelligence in healthcare.”
$300,000 awarded to early detection and population health tools in Future Health Challenge
A global initiative by Abu Dhabi and MIT Solve has awarded a total of $300,000 to tools for the early detection of health risks and population health, with the winning solution taking away $200,000 toward equipping frontline health workers in “low-resource” settings with mobile clinical decision support tools.
Winners of the Future Health Challenge were selected from five finalist teams, with Australian ThinkMD coming out top for its mobile clinical decision support tools to improve triage, treatment, and referrals, also turning care encounters into “real-time population health signals”. The platform is reportedly in use by over 9,000 frontline workers across 885 facilities, and has been used as an early warning system in Zambia, recognising symptom patterns preceding a cholera outbreak.
Two further awards of $50,000 were given to US Vector Control Innovations for its AI-enabled mosquito surveillance helping to detect changing vector risks earlier and enable earlier targeted interventions, and to Huna, Brazi, for its use of AI to identify people at increased risk of cancer from blood tests.
Taiwan and NICE renew partnership on health technology
NICE has renewed its partnership with Taiwanese health agencies as part of a new phase of Taiwan-UK collaboration on Health Technology Assessment.
The partnership’s focuses will be on innovation in healthcare assessment frameworks, digital health transformation, talent development, and incorporating societal perspectives into healthcare decision making. Key priorities cover sharing experiences in digital governance for cancer care, and promoting digital health transformation through the adoption of FHIR international standards.
An initial partnership was formed in May 2023, leading to developments including Taiwan’s provisional payment for innovative cancer drugs, and the establishment of the Center for Health Technology Assessment.
