Digital health coaching platform Numan launches AI assistant

Digital healthcare provider, Numan, is launching an AI Health Assistant aimed at bolstering the firm’s holistic approach to weight management through health coaching.

The AI assistant, which provides tailored advice on topics such as healthy recipes and exercise, is currently in beta and has initially been rolled out to more than 3,000 patients since October 2024.

Sokratis Papafloratos, chief executive and founder of Numan, said: “The key to improving healthcare is creating continuous, personalised experiences that can scale to millions.

“That’s why we’re building our own in-house frameworks and technology that can fundamentally reshape how healthcare is delivered.

“The fact is healthcare faces a critical gap in delivering personalised, scalable solutions, particularly for stigmatised conditions like obesity.

“With our proprietary safety frameworks and patient-centred AI, Numan is bridging this gap.”

It is the first of a suite of proprietary, AI-driven patient engagement and support tools that Numan aims to launch in 2025.

This includes manual reviews by health coaches, to ensure that any patient who needs further clinical support is escalated to a clinician.

By tailoring AI-driven insights to patient needs and behaviours, Numan’s AI health assistant aims to help patients overcome barriers to long-term success in managing obesity and achieve sustainable health outcomes.

Numan has created an AI-driven evaluation tool, known as the Numan Aegis system, to help ensure patient safety, clinical accuracy, and swift human intervention when required.

Dr Paul Sacher, clinical scientist at Numan, said: “Our focus is on advancing AI-driven healthcare that is both safe and highly personalised.

“From the very beginning, we recognised that scalability and safety must go hand in hand, which is why we built Aegis from the ground up.

“As an automated monitoring and evaluation system, Aegis addresses a key challenge in healthcare AI: ensuring rigorous oversight and clinical accuracy, even as systems scale to support thousands – or millions – of patients.” 

As debates about the ethics and safety of AI in healthcare grow, Numan is compliant with the ISO42001 standard, which offers detailed guidance and a structured approach to managing AI-related risks.

Dr Alexander Graham, partner at The AbedGraham Group, said: “It has been a pleasure to work with Numan on the development of their ISO42001 AI Management System (AIMS).

“As AI use continues to grow in healthcare, providers of these systems must be aware of the risks they present to patients.

“By adopting the principles of ISO42001 throughout its product lifecycles, Numan has demonstrated industry leadership and a commitment to regulatory excellence.”

Meanwhile on 13 January 2025, prime minister Sir Keir Starmer unveiled details of the government’s AI Opportunities Action Plan, which includes a national data library planned to unlock the value of public data and support AI development. Starmer said that the plan would “make our country an AI superpower”.