AI in Clinical Practice Conference 2026

---

Last week I had the pleasure of attending and speaking at the AI in Clinical Practice: Transforming Healthcare in Aotearoa conference in Auckland. The event brought together a diverse group of clinicians, policymakers, and tech vendors to explore the real-world embedding of AI into our local clinical workflows.

As a professional deeply invested in this space, I was pleased to see a strong consensus emerge. Here are some of my biggest takeaways and learnings from the frontlines of AI in New Zealand healthcare.

The rapid scaling of HealthX

One of the most eye-opening sessions came from Sonny Taite, the Director of Digital Innovation and AI at Health New Zealand. He gave a great overview of HealthX, a delivery model designed to scale AI solutions rapidly using a tightly managed monthly initiative approach. Sonny framed AI as a workforce multiplier aiming to keep clinicians' work inside of their actual working hours to combat burnout. The pace is impressive: their rollout of AI clinical scribes expanded from an initial six hospital emergency departments to an incredible 37 EDs nationwide in just a few months.

Confronting bias, ethics, and the law

Rosie Dobson brought a much-needed psychological and risk-averse lens to the ethics of AI. She warned that we cannot blindly trust tools trained on publicly available, overseas datasets that fail to reflect Aotearoa's unique populations, including Māori and Pacific communities. She also highlighted the very real dangers of automation bias and AI hallucinations, noting that clinicians are surprisingly poor at catching AI-generated errors in clinical notes.

From a regulatory standpoint, Amberley James from Dentons delivered a stark reality check on legal frameworks. She made it crystal clear that the legal liability for using AI in clinical assessments always rests with the human practitioner. Her main warning? Saying "the AI told me to do it" will never hold up as a legal defence. We knew that I guess but Amberley gave it right between the eyes.

Putting equity first

Jess Morgan-French, CEO of Collaborative Aotearoa, challenged the room by asking: If AI improves efficiency but not equity, haven't we missed the point? She shared an inspiring case study on a primary care pilot at Local Doctors in South Auckland, where they are rolling out Drumbeat AI to assist in diagnosing ear disease in tamariki. By empowering healthcare assistants to take photos of eardrums for AI analysis, they are working to eliminate the delayed diagnoses that currently impact children's speech and education. I’d heard about this one before in more detail at Collaborative Aotearoa’s conference in Christchurch but it was interesting to see the equity take on it, which Jess is clearly deeply invested in.

Computer vision in diagnostics

The diagnostic imaging presentations were absolute technical highlights. Tana Isaac from Lunit (who have acquired Volpara, who we called out in our AI e-book last year) discussed how AI is objectively assessing breast density and image quality in cancer screening. He provided a fascinating breakdown of how computer vision analyses individual pixels differently than human vision, meaning AI can detect subtle details that the naked eye might miss. However, he noted that human judgment remains critical for contextualising the patient's history and applying ethical reasoning.

Lara Wild from Molemap echoed this sentiment when discussing their homegrown Kahu AI. Molemap uses AI not as a final diagnostic tool, but as a real-time triage assistant that flags the likelihood of melanoma. It helps reduce the "benign burden" on dermatologists, allowing experts to focus on the most critical lesions while boosting the confidence of newer melanographers.

Looking ahead

I closed the day attempting to hit a high note during the final session, focusing on reimagining clinical practice and why the real risk isn't AI failure, but rather its underutilisation. It’s about shifting from just improving individual tasks to completely redesigning how knowledge flows in our healthcare system. Watch this space, as I will be doing a dedicated deep dive into exactly what I spoke about very soon!

---

CIO Studio provides independent digital strategy and leadership for New Zealand's health, NGO, and community organisations. If you want to talk to an expert about your digital strategy, get in touch for a no obligation conversation.