PocDoc joins Healthcare Management roundtable on AI and public health
There's a common fear about AI in healthcare: that it'll serve the people who are already well served and leave everyone else further behind. At Healthcare Management's roundtable on remodelling public health through AI, PocDoc's Chief Technology Officer argued the opposite, and the panel agreed.
PocDoc, the UK's leading digital diagnostics company, took part in the discussion, the first in Healthcare Management's new Redesigning Health roundtable series. The write-up was published on 5 November 2026.
Robin joined Dr Rishi Das-Gupta, Chief Executive of Health Innovation Network South London; Dr Jihad Malasi, GP and clinical lead at Kent and Medway ICB; Andrew Davies, Executive Director of Digital Health at ABHI; and Dr Jingqing Zhang, Head of AI at Pangaea Data.
Guardrails that let you go faster
The panel was honest about the tension. New technology moves quickly, while proper evaluation takes time, and Andrew Davies of ABHI pointed out that the system will need tools to monitor the tools.
Robin agreed governance matters. He also made the case for what's lost when good technology waits: the chance to reach people early, at low cost, while a risk can still be changed.
"I'm optimistic that with the right guardrails, AI can help us innovate faster and help more people," he said.
For prevention, that speed isn't a nice extra. A high cholesterol reading caught this year is a conversation with a pharmacist. Caught a decade later, it can be a heart attack.
A new kind of diagnostic test
Robin explained how AI has reshaped PocDoc's mission to reduce preventable disease, including cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and chronic kidney disease.
"We've been able to design, build and scale a new category of In Vitro Diagnostic device that enables people at home to test themselves, to understand their risks and be guided towards actions that can help reduce those risks," he said.
In practice, a smartphone camera reads a finger-prick test and PocDoc's AI turns the colour of the test into clinical results in seconds. No lab is needed, so the test can go wherever people are.
Taking care to where people are
The sharpest exchange came on health equity. Robin challenged the blanket assumption that AI widens the gap between people who can access care and people who can't, pointing to PocDoc's work taking heart health checks out into communities.
Dr Malasi, a practising GP, acknowledged the role some AI providers are playing in reaching communities that are hard to engage, naming PocDoc as an example. Dr Das-Gupta agreed: "AI is a fantastic tool for coming to people where they are in their lives."
That's the principle behind the Healthy Heart Check. Many people at risk of heart disease don't go looking for a health check. They work long hours, care for family or feel they've no reason to see a GP. Testing in pharmacies, workplaces, community venues and at home means prevention reaches them first.
How the Healthy Heart Check works
A full cholesterol profile, BMI, NHS Heart Age and a ten-year cardiovascular risk score (QRISK3) from a single finger-prick, delivered to a smartphone in under ten minutes, with results able to flow into the patient's NHS record and a clear pathway to follow-up for anyone at risk. No lab. No GP wait.
Where the conversation goes next
The 10 Year Health Plan asks the NHS to make three shifts: from hospital to community, from sickness to prevention and from analogue to digital. The roundtable showed how closely those shifts depend on each other. Prevention only works at scale if it reaches people in their communities, and that reach depends on digital tools the system can trust.
The question is no longer whether AI belongs in public health. It's how industry and the NHS adopt proven tools safely - and fast enough to matter. PocDoc intends to be part of that answer.
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