The latest Digital Health News industry round up includes news on an automated recruitment platform for clinical studies, an acquisition in the medical imaging field and an Australian company focused on measuring coding launching into the UK. Former NHS leader, Tim Kelsey, has launched an international division of Beamtree into the UK – an Australian company that focuses on measuring coding and the quality of hospital care. Kelsey leads the Australian company, but the new London-based arm will be led by coding policy expert Jennifer Nobbs and former Paterson Inquiry advisor Alex Kafetz. Beamtree works with health organisations around the world in a bid to improve the capture, management and leverage of human expertise. The UK office will focus on AI in health, clinical decision support, data quality and analytics supporting better health outcomes.

The proliferation of artificial intelligence technology will have a bigger impact on the global economy and society than the internet, according to outgoing Cisco Australia chief technology officer Kevin Bloch. Australia's place at the table in the development of these new artificial intelligence technologies and systems that will underpin all sectors of the economy in decades to come is far from certain. Even Australia's largest companies had not yet come to grips with the importance of the shift toward AI tech and with few exceptions were not directing adequate resources into R&D. Mr Bloch will leave Cisco on Friday after 21 years at the company, including the last 12 years as its chief technology officer. It is only a little ironic that at the height of a global pandemic and all the economic uncertainty it has wrought, Mr Bloch says the scale of the opportunities in the tech sector are such that the time is right for a move.

Microsoft Australia's national technology officer Lee Hickin has reaffirmed that artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are not replacing humans in the workforce, but are placing humans into positions where they can provide more value in their work. Speaking at ZDNet's Next Big Thing event in Sydney on Thursday, Hickin said the implementation of AI into work environments will augment the human experience, rather than replace it altogether. Using Microsoft's work at Northern Territory fisheries as an example, Hickin said the implementation of AI can "take away what we would call'grunt work' in jobs and functions". The AI fisheries project uses the company's Azure Cognitive Service to identify and count fish in waters without needing to sort through hours of under-water footage. The solution has already shown that the local golden snapper and black jewfish species are overfished.