Te Whatu Ora (the healthcare system of New Zealand) has appointed Sonny Taite as acting director of innovation and AI and launched a new programme called HealthX.
An initiative that aims to deliver one AI-driven healthcare project each month from September 2025 until February 2026, based on ideas from frontline staff instead of new concepts.
Speaking at the TUANZ and DHA Tech Users Summit in Auckland, New Zealand, Taite explained that HealthX will focus on three pressing challenges: workforce shortages, inequitable access to care, and clinical inefficiencies.
He emphasised the importance of validating ideas, securing funding, and ensuring successful pilots scale nationally.
The programme has already tested an AI-powered medical scribe in the Hawke’s Bay emergency department, with early results showing a significant reduction in administrative workload.
Taite is also exploring solutions for specialist shortages, particularly in dermatology, where some regions lack public services, forcing patients to travel or seek private care.
A core cross-functional team, a clinical expert group, and frontline champions such as chief medical officers will drive HealthX.
Taite underlined that building on existing cybersecurity and AI infrastructure at Te Whatu Ora, which already processes billions of security signals monthly, provides a strong foundation for scaling innovation across the health system.
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GitHub has launched a new app for Microsoft Teams that integrates Copilot directly into workplace chats. The tool is designed to turn everyday conversations into code, pull requests and documentation, bringing development work closer to team discussions instead of separating them into different platforms.
An app that functions like an additional team member who understands the codebase. It can open pull requests, write code, automate tasks and request reviews, while respecting repository and organisational policies.
Analysing project history and surfacing relevant files provides context-aware support without removing human oversight.
Teams can now move from reporting a bug to delivering a fix entirely within a chat channel. From identifying problems to discussing solutions and seeing Copilot carry out changes step by step, the whole workflow remains visible to the team.
Progress updates are displayed in real time inside Teams instead of requiring developers to switch tools.
The new app is previewed, with GitHub inviting user feedback before a wider rollout. The earlier GitHub for Teams app has been renamed GitHub Notifications, which now focuses only on surfacing issues, pull requests and workflow updates.
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The Chinese tech company, Huawei, has introduced over 30 global benchmark showcases at HUAWEI CONNECT 2025, highlighting how AI is reshaping digital transformation across education, healthcare, finance, government, and energy.
The company emphasised that networks have become the backbone of intelligent upgrades instead of serving only as information channels.
Among the examples, Shenzhen Welkin School presented an innovative education model to expand equitable learning opportunities. In finance, China Pacific Insurance demonstrated how its intelligent computing centre uses large-model training and inference to accelerate digital services.
Resorts World Sentosa in Singapore showcased an innovative campus network that improves the visitor experience and sets a new standard for digital innovation.
These initiatives were developed jointly by Huawei and its partners, creating replicable practices that can be applied worldwide. Leaders from Huawei and industry organisations attended the launch, underlining the collaborative nature of these projects.
The showcases will be open for on-site visits, offering customers direct insight into how AI can be integrated into networks to boost efficiency and enhance user experience.
Huawei noted that the insights gained from these projects will guide future innovations. The company and its partners aim to refine solutions and extend their applicability across various sectors by drawing on proven industry applications.
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The company has already invested over $1 billion in digital infrastructure, including subsea cable projects such as Equiano and Umoja, enabling 100 million people to come online for the first time. Four new regional cable hubs are being established to boost connectivity and resilience further.
Alongside infrastructure, Google will provide college students in eight African countries with a free one-year subscription to Google AI Pro. The tools, including Gemini 2.5 Pro and Guided Learning, are designed to support research, coding, and problem-solving.
By 2030, Google says it intends to reach 500 million Africans with AI-powered innovations tackling issues such as crop resilience, flood forecasting and access to education.
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More than 38 million farmers in India have received AI-powered forecasts predicting the start of the monsoon season, helping them plan when to sow crops.
The forecasts, powered by NeuralGCM, a Google Research model, blend physics-based simulations with machine learning trained on decades of climate data.
Unlike traditional models requiring supercomputers, NeuralGCM can run on a laptop, making advanced AI weather predictions more accessible.
Research shows that accurate early forecasts can nearly double Indian farmers’ annual income by helping them decide when to plant, switch crops or hold back.
The initiative demonstrates how AI research can directly support communities vulnerable to climate shifts and improve resilience in agriculture.
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To support this momentum, Google Cloud hosted its first AI Builders Forum in Silicon Valley, where hundreds of founders gathered to hear about new tools, infrastructure and programmes designed to accelerate innovation.
Google Cloud has also released a technical guide to help startups build and scale AI agents, including retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and multimodal approaches. The guide highlights leveraging Google’s agentic development kit and agent-to-agent tools.
The support is bolstered by the Google for Startups Cloud Program, which offers credits worth up to $350,000, mentorship and access to partner AI models from Anthropic and Meta. Google says its goal is to give startups the technology and resources to launch, scale and compete globally.
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Notion has officially entered the agent era with the launch of Notion Agent, the centrepiece of its Notion 3.0 rollout. Described as a ‘teammate and Notion super user,’ the AI agent is designed to automate work inside and beyond Notion.
The new tool can automatically build pages and databases, search across connected tools like Slack, and perform up to 20 minutes of autonomous work at a time. Notion says this enables faster, more efficient workflows across hundreds of pages simultaneously.
A key feature is memory, which allows the agent to ‘remember’ a user’s preferences and working style. These memories can be edited and stored under multiple profiles, allowing users to customise their agent for different projects or contexts.
Notion highlights use cases such as generating email campaigns, consolidating feedback into reports, and transforming meeting notes into emails or proposals. The company says the agent acts as a partner who plans tasks and carries them out end-to-end.
Future updates will expand personalisation and automation, including fully customised agents capable of even more complex tasks. Notion positions the launch as a step toward a new era of intelligent, self-directed productivity.
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The UK and US have signed a landmark Tech Prosperity Deal, securing a £250 billion investment package across technology and energy sectors. The agreement includes major commitments from leading AI companies to expand data centres, supercomputing capacity, and create 15,000 jobs in Britain.
Energy security forms a core part of the deal, with plans for 12 advanced nuclear reactors in northeast England. These facilities are expected to generate power for millions of homes and businesses, lower bills, and strengthen bilateral energy resilience.
The package includes $30 billion from Microsoft and $6.8 billion from Google, alongside other AI investments aimed at boosting UK research. It also funds the country’s largest supercomputer project with Nscale, establishing a foundation for AI leadership in Europe.
American firms have pledged £150 billion for UK projects, while British companies will invest heavily in the US. Pharmaceutical giant GSK has committed nearly $30 billion to American operations, underlining the cross-Atlantic nature of the partnership.
The Tech Prosperity Deal follows a recent UK-US trade agreement that removes tariffs on steel and aluminium and opens markets for key exports. The new accord builds on that momentum, tying economic growth to innovation, deregulation, and frontier technologies.
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The two US tech firms, NVIDIA and Intel, have announced a major partnership to develop multiple generations of AI infrastructure and personal computing products.
They say that the collaboration will merge NVIDIA’s leadership in accelerated computing with Intel’s expertise in CPUs and advanced manufacturing.
For data centres, Intel will design custom x86 CPUs for NVIDIA, which will be integrated into the company’s AI platforms to power hyperscale and enterprise workloads.
In personal computing, Intel will create x86 system-on-chips that incorporate NVIDIA RTX GPU chiplets, aimed at delivering high-performance PCs for a wide range of consumers.
As part of the deal, NVIDIA will invest $5 billion in Intel common stock at $23.28 per share, pending regulatory approvals.
NVIDIA’s CEO Jensen Huang described the collaboration as a ‘fusion of two world-class platforms’ that will accelerate computing innovation, while Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan said the partnership builds on decades of x86 innovation and will unlock breakthroughs across industries.
The move underscores how AI is reshaping both infrastructure and personal computing. By combining architectures and ecosystems instead of pursuing separate paths, Intel and NVIDIA are positioning themselves to shape the next era of computing at a global scale.
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Russia has made its first salary payment in digital rubles, marking a milestone in the country’s adoption of its central bank digital currency (CBDC). The Ministry of Finance confirmed the payment with the Central Bank of Russia will be available to government employees on request.
The first payment went to Anatoly Aksakov, State Duma finance committee chair and key figure in digital currency legislation. Aksakov spent the digital rubles on charity and daily purchases, including a restaurant, testing its practical use.
The digital ruble is scheduled for a phased public launch on 1 September 2026. Trials have already included government transfers, commercial transactions, and payments in transport and real estate, signalling a gradual integration into the wider economy.
Officials plan to allow transactions between digital ruble accounts starting 1 January 2026, while payments will remain optional for recipients.
Russia’s CBDC development began in 2021, with legislation adopted in 2023. The initiative aims to modernise financial operations, increase efficiency in federal payments, and provide an alternative to traditional cash.
The rollout is being monitored closely as a test case for wider adoption of state-backed digital currencies.
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