What makes us different
Sense Medical was founded in Christchurch in 2010 by Dr Alistair Rumball-Smith, a practising clinician, and Layton Duncan, New Zealand's first iOS developer. Fifteen years later, Cortex runs in every specialty at Christchurch Hospital and in hospitals from Hawke's Bay to the West Coast.
It started small on purpose. The first work with the Canterbury District Health Board was a handful of mobile tools for single departments. The first real test came in 2017, when three General Surgery wards trialled Cortex for twelve weeks. They kept it. Neighbouring departments asked when it was their turn, a waitlist formed, and the rollout across the hospital followed.
We build for the people who use the software. Some of us have practised medicine, so we know the problems first-hand: the patient list in a pocket, the page nobody answers, the handover that lives on a folded piece of paper.
How we work
Fifteen years inside working hospitals has taught us how to deploy without disrupting care. Wards keep running while they migrate. Training takes minutes, not weeks, because Cortex works the way an iPhone works. And when a form or workflow needs to change, clinical teams change it themselves in Cortex Designer instead of waiting on a vendor.
The problems Cortex solves are seen worldwide. Paper lists, pagers, and lost handovers exist in every sized hospital in every country, and a platform proven against them in one national health system is ready for the next. Cortex is built to travel.
Founders
Dr Alistair Rumball-Smith
Co-founder & Director
A clinician who has worked the ward rounds Cortex was built for. Alistair leads clinical design and our hospital partnerships.
Layton Duncan
Co-founder & Director
New Zealand's first iOS developer, previously Senior iOS Developer at Xero. Layton leads the engineering behind Cortex's native, offline-first architecture.
The team
Dr Chris Rumball
Clinical Lead, Cortex
Chris has been closely involved in Cortex's development and implementation at Canterbury, working directly with clinicians across disciplines and specialties to digitise and improve their workflows. He is also a Specialist Pain Medicine Physician in private practice in Christchurch and holds a PhD from the Liggins Institute.
Robert Payne
Senior Engineer
Robert has engineered much of the Cortex iOS application and server backend, and has led Cortex's technical rollout at Canterbury since 2015. Based in Auckland, he previously spent a decade building products for Vend, Realestate.co.nz, Flossie.com, and other New Zealand and international businesses.
Sophie Walton-Smith
Software Developer
Sophie builds the web interfaces clinicians use every day. She joined Sense Medical in 2025 after frontend and full-stack roles at startups across London and New Zealand, including Suade Labs, UnderPinned, and EVNEX.
Udo Froetschl
Project Manager
Udo is a results-driven IT consultant and senior project manager with 35+ years of experience delivering complex, cross-functional programmes for New Zealand government agencies and international organisations.
Dr Mike Roberts
Medical Advisor
Mike's background spans emergency medicine and cardiothoracic surgery in both the NHS and New Zealand, where he has held chief medical officer and medical director roles for more than 15 years.
How we got here
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2010 · Founded in Christchurch
A clinician and an engineer set out to fix how hospital teams coordinate care, building targeted mobile tools with the Canterbury District Health Board.
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2015 · Cortex launches
Developed with Canterbury DHB through its Via Innovations programme, Cortex launched publicly in October 2015.
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2017 · The General Surgery pilot
Three wards and more than 180 clinicians trialled Cortex at Christchurch Hospital. At the end of the twelve weeks, the wards would not give it back.
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2018 · Measured outcomes, and an award
Canterbury DHB reported a 20% reduction in average length of stay and 12% fewer readmissions in the trial wards, and committed to rolling Cortex out for the new Acute Services Building. At the HiNZ Conference in Wellington, Cortex won the NZ Health IT Solution award.
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2019 · Hospital-wide rollout
Adoption grew department by department into a waitlist: 14 departments and 11,000 clinical notes a week by December.
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2020 · The COVID-19 acceleration
A planned three-year nursing rollout was condensed into six weeks, with new screening and referral workflows built in days. By July, clinicians had created their millionth clinical note.
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2022 · Christchurch campus complete
Maternity went live in December 2021, completing coverage of every specialty on the campus. The Cortex Innovation Case Study followed, with a foreword by former Canterbury DHB Chief Executive David Meates.
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2023 · Beyond Canterbury
Emergency Calls replaced pagers at Hawke's Bay Hospital, Nurse Maude Hospice brought Cortex to community palliative care, and deployments began at Burwood and on the West Coast.
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2025 · Tertiary to rural, proven
Ashburton and Greymouth's Te Nīkau Hospital went live, connecting patient care across the Southern Alps with Canterbury through a shared clinical record.
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Today
More than 2 million clinical tasks, 16 million clinical documents, and 1 million patient records, in continuous production with Health New Zealand.
"Sense Medical are honestly the best vendor I have worked with."
Catherine Griffiths
Project Manager - Regional & Local Digital Health Initiatives
Health NZ | Te Whatu Ora - Hawke's Bay