Digital Health Coffee Time Briefing ☕

Your morning summary of digital health news, information and events to know about if you want to be “in the know”.

👇 News

📸 The REFRAME Project has launched a free, global digital image bank to show how real diseases and conditions appear on a full spectrum of skin tones. The project is a collaboration between NHS England, the University of the West of England and Norwegian tech company Fotoware. The initiative aims to prevent misdiagnosis and wrong treatment of people with non-white skin tones. The platform has the ability for users to locate, filter and – where appropriate – download and use images for diagnostics, education and communication.

💷 Linear Diagnostics has been awarded £1m funding to finalise the development of a rapid test for sexually transmitted diseases. The Birmingham spin-out is working in partnership with the NIHR HealthTech Research Centre (HRC) in Diagnostic and Technology Evaluation and the North East Innovation Lab, part of Newcastle Hospitals. The funding from NIHR’s Invention for Innovation programme covers a three-year period, which will culminate in the first test of a low-cost, accurate, near-patient diagnostic platform.

💊 A collaboration between British biopharmaceutical company GSK and IT service provider Adesso, has resulted in  Digital Reminders for Adherence of Medicines and Vaccines (DREAM), a digital reminder service for medication intake and vaccination appointments. The service has gone live in 23 markets globally, and integrates with patients’ lives to ensure they consistently follow their treatment plans.

💰Oakglen Group has completed the sale of its interests in CareLineLive to global private equity firm Accel-KKR. Oakglen first invested in CareLineLive during a critical growth stage, and provided follow-on capital in 2024. The software provider’s technology helps care providers digitise workflows, improve operational efficiency and deliver better care outcomes.

🤖 Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust has won a digital innovation award, recognising its use of a ‘bot’ to transform how quickly new staff are recruited at the trust. The Skills for Health: Our Health Heroes Awards comes after the trust was able to release 24,177 hours of time back to the team – equivalent to more than 12 full time posts and £325,000.

❓Did you know?

UK health tech startups are worth £32bn, according to a report from the Startup Coalition.

The HealthTech Index examined the top 1,000 British startups in the health tech sector. As well as revealing its value as of December 2024, it also found startups in the index brought in £865m in grant funding last year and employed close to 30,000 people in the UK.

The biopharmaceuticals subsector was found to be the most valuable, with 276 companies raising £11.9bn collectively.

📖 What we’re reading

Siva Anandaciva, director of policy at The King’s Fund, has written an analysis of the announcements for health and care ‘What Does the 2025 Comprehensive Spending Review Mean For Health And Care‘.

The analysis explores the budgets within the Department of Health and Social Care, what the figures mean for adult social care, and wider health considerations such as tobacco cessation, early interventions to addresses the causes of homelessness, and announcements on life sciences.

He also adds context, both in terms of comparing to other departments as well as historic comparisons.

Anandaciva writes that the government has rightly talked about the need to make trade-offs and difficult choices, but at the moment the trade-offs are still too coded to see.

For example, the government said in its manifesto that all NHS waiting time targets would be met by the end of this parliament, and this commitment has been reinforced, but what about long waits in A&E departments, cancer standards ambulance response times and mental health waiting times?

For now, the answer is ‘to be determined’ – and this is just one example of the trade-offs that might still be coming, Anandaciva writes.

🚨Upcoming events

17-18 July, University of Warwick – Summer Schools 2025