01
New Zealand national ambient-scribe panel award
Pending at the close of this period; the award gates a substantial tranche of downstream licences.
Q3 2026 · inaugural editionData window: 15–23 July 2026 · Next edition: October 2026
The ANZ Healthcare AI Procurement Index.
The only published dataset of AI procurement, hiring and ownership signals across 318 named multi-site healthcare operators in Australia and New Zealand — the operators large enough to run centralised phone operations, and therefore large enough to buy AI voice, ambient scribe or contact-centre capability at enterprise scale.
Key findingsQ3 2026
- 01
318 named ANZ healthcare operators tracked, spanning ~15,900 sites across 14 segments and two countries.
- 02
15 of 318 organisations (4.7%) sat in an identifiable AI-voice or scribe buying window in the 9-day inaugural period.
- 03
Ambient AI scribes are being procured ahead of patient-facing voice — 3 of the largest live processes in the window were scribe or clinical-documentation buys.
- 04
Aged care leads every leading indicator: 17 contact-centre hiring signals, 11 executive appointments and 8 ownership changes — more than any other segment.
- 05
45 of the tracked operators are private-equity-held — nearly a fifth of the universe — a group whose ownership transitions reset technology capital plans.
Chapter 01
The universe we track
Operators by segment
303 operators · ~15,900 sites- Aged & community care102 · 3,273 sites
- Primary Health Networks (commissioners)31
- Public health services / LHD / HHS / Te Whatu Ora29 · 552 sites
- GP corporates & primary care groups23 · 1,530 sites
- Dental groups & DSOs23 · 1,180 sites
- Private & day hospitals15 · 369 sites
- Allied health groups14 · 1,279 sites
- Veterinary groups13 · 706 sites
- After-hours & telehealth operators11 · 14 sites
- Imaging networks9 · 793 sites
- Pathology networks8 · 5,368 sites
- Specialist networks12 · 338 sites
- Health insurers (member contact operations)7 · 480 sites
- Triage & medical deputising6 · 15 sites
Plus 15 PE / consolidator owners tracked separately, for a headline total of 318 entities referenced.
Geography
AU 83%
NZ 17%
265 Australian · 53 New Zealand
Ownership structure
- Not-for-profit / charitable59
- Private equity–held45
- Privately held31
- Listed (ASX/NZX)27
- Corporate subsidiary19
Nearly a fifth of tracked operators sit in PE portfolios — ownership transitions reset capital plans, and the resulting investment windows are among the most reliable predictors of technology spend we observe.
Chapter 02
Headline finding
Procurement has moved from voice to scribes first.
Ambient AI scribes are being bought through formal procurement channels ahead of patient-facing voice. Three of the largest live processes in the window were scribe or clinical-documentation procurements — including a national ambient-scribe panel in New Zealand with award pending, and an enterprise scribe tender at an Australian hospital and health service. Patient-facing voice appears almost entirely as contact-centre and telephony modernisation: six federal contract-renewal windows during the period covered contact-centre platforms, telephony services and unified-communications migrations, not conversational AI.
Read: the buying committee is meeting AI first in the consult room, not on the phone line. The scribe decision is often the network's first AI governance conversation — data residency, clinical liability, vendor diligence — and the voice decision inherits whatever precedent that sets.
Live procurement processes in window
- Scribe / clinical-documentation procurements3incl. NZ national panel (award pending)
- Federal contact-centre / telephony renewals6modernisation, not conversational AI
- Open tenders & procurement notices5across all classes
- Contract awards recorded3in window
Chapter 03
Where demand pressure is concentrated
Signals recorded in the window, by class
- Contact-centre / patient-access hiring46
- Transformation & AI programme announcements31
- Executive appointments (CIO/CDO/COO/CX)31
- Ownership change / M&A27
- Open tenders & procurement notices5
- Contract renewal windows6
- Contract awards3
- Published phone-access complaints6
Segment spotlight
Aged care leads every leading indicator.
- Contact-centre hiringmost of any segment17
- Executive appointmentsCIO/CDO/COO/CX11
- Ownership changesM&A / transitions8
Consistent with regulatory load: the Aged Care Act 2024 (in force since 1 November 2025) requires accessible complaints and whistleblower channels; the Support at Home transition obliged providers to re-contact their entire home-care client base. Both land as inbound call volume.
Imaging is the second hiring hotspot — 10 signals, driven by centralised booking-centre build-outs, several tied to recent consolidation. Executive churn at 31 relevant appointments in a nine-day window across a 318-organisation universe is a high rate — new operating and digital executives typically re-open technology decisions within their first two quarters.
Chapter 04
The in-market rate
Applying our scoring threshold — one high-weight signal (an open tender or confirmed procurement) or corroborating evidence across two independent signal families — we identify the following organisations as being in an active buying window at the close of the period.
15 / 318
organisations in an identifiable buying window — a 4.7% in-market rate.
We publish this figure as a market baseline. A 4.7% in-market rate implies that, at any moment, roughly one in twenty large ANZ healthcare operators is actively evaluating capability in this category — and nineteen in twenty are not, regardless of how they respond to outbound.
In-market organisations by segment
- Aged & community care6
- Public health services5
- GP corporates2
- Pathology1
- Imaging1
Total: 15 of 318 tracked organisations.
Chapter 05
What we expect next quarter
02
Australian state scribe panels
At least one state health procurement panel remains undecided well past its published decision estimate — a delay that is itself a signal about institutional caution on clinical AI.
03
Policy tailwind
The third National Policy Roadmap for AI in Healthcare (July 2026) explicitly recommends an AI-enabled conversational 'front door' for national health lines. Policy endorsement historically precedes public-sector procurement by two to four quarters.
Chapter M
Methodology, limits & corrections
What this index is
A census of observable public signals against a fixed, named universe, collected on a consistent daily schedule and scored with a published threshold.
What it is not
Not a survey, a vendor-market-share estimate, or a claim about deals we cannot see. Private procurement — the majority of commercial healthcare buying — is invisible to this method by construction. Signal counts reflect what became public, not total market activity.
Known limits
The inaugural window is nine days, which is short; quarterly editions from October will carry full-quarter comparatives and trend lines. Job-posting signals are perishable and skew toward organisations that advertise publicly. Site-count estimates are drawn from public sources and change with consolidation. Government procurement is systematically over-represented relative to private buying because it is published by law.
Corrections
We publish corrections openly. If your organisation appears mis-classified in our universe, or a signal we have recorded is wrong, write to hello@gocadence.ai and we will correct it in the next edition and note the change.
For journalists
Live figures, pre-cleared quotes and publication-ready charts (SVG + PNG, CC BY 4.0) are available in the Cadence Newsroom. Media enquiries to hello@gocadence.ai — we aim to respond within 2 hours during Australian business hours.
Independence
Cadence advises healthcare networks on selecting AI voice platforms. We are paid a success fee at the same rate regardless of which platform a client selects, and we take no affiliate commissions or vendor funding. No vendor sees this index before publication, and no vendor pays to appear in it.
Chapter D
Data & citation
Endpoint
Structured data (JSON)
Every figure on this page, machine-readable. Stable schema across editions.
Open data.json
Endpoint
Flat table (CSV)
Same figures, tabular. Import into a sheet, notebook, or your data warehouse.
Download data.csv
Licence
CC BY 4.0
Reuse the data anywhere — reporting, presentations, models, briefings. Attribution required. Preferred attribution below.
Licence termsCite this
Cadence. (2026). The ANZ Healthcare AI Procurement Index, Q3 2026. https://gocadence.ai/procurement-index
The live data behind this index
ANZ Health Tech Tender Tracker
Every procurement signal in this index eventually surfaces in the tracker as a live public record — sortable by expiry window, category and country. Free, open API, CC BY 4.0.
Open the trackerFor network leaders
Want to know if your network is in the 4.7%?
A 30-minute confidential fit call with Cadence. We'll walk your network against the same signal families used in the index and tell you honestly where you sit.
Editions
- Permanent link ↗Q3 2026 edition — inauguralData window 15–23 July 2026
- Get notifiedOctober 2026 editionFull-quarter data — comparatives and trend lines