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

🚀 Propel Healthtech West Yorkshire has launched its accelerator programme for health tech innovators. With £4.5m in funding from the West Yorkshire Mayor’s investment zone, successful applicants will gain a six-month programme of masterclasses, innovator surgeries, events and mentoring sessions. Applications close on 7 November 2025.

💰 Growth Lending has announced an initial commitment of £150m to the UK healthcare sector, with £10m already deployed to Arishta Ltd, a newly formed healthcare group focused on AI-led care home transformation, and a further £15.5m to YourCare to expand children’s homes in the north west.

🚑 South Central Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust is one of the first NHS sites to install Great British Energy solar panels. The move is anticipated to cut the trust’s bills by more than £32,000 a year from the first planned installations at Winchester and Eastleigh Resource Centre alone.

📣 Codex Global has entered into a strategic partnership with Diya Health, an AI-powered healthcare communications platform. The partnership will see Codex’s expertise in language solutions combined with Diya’s technology to transform how healthcare providers manage interpreting and translation services.

✔️ The Organisation for the Review of Care and Health Apps (ORCHA) is launching a new global standard for digital health safety. It will consist of a new tiered quality mark providing compliance with regulations, called ORCHA Assured; Verify, a free tool to check app safety and assurance; plus, a subscription-based intelligence platform called Compare, allowing health systems to review and adopt trusted digital tools at scale.

❓Did you know?

Every £1 invested in preventative social care delivers £3.17 in savings, according to research from the Local Government Association.

Experts at conversational voice companion firm Sentai say that scaling preventative care schemes nationally has the potential to reduce future care costs by £11.1bn.

According to their research, around 2.3m older people in England are living in homes that actively harm their health through cold, damp or in unsafe conditions.

Paul Statham, chief executive of Sentai, said: “Prevention is one of the most powerful tools we have. By investing early, whether through better housing, access to activity, or smart technologies like Sentai, helping older adults stay independent at home.

“We can help people live longer, healthier lives while also easing the pressure on overstretched health and care systems.

“Ageing should be celebrated as a time of independence and contribution, not decline and cost.”

📖 What we’re reading

With the ongoing drive to get all NHS trusts using electronic health records (EHRs), a study published in BMJ Health & Care Informatics, has taken a closer look at the link between the use of EHRs and health and wellbeing concerns in staff.

‘Usability of an electronic health record 6 months post go-live and its association with burnout, insomnia and turnover intention: a cross-sectional study in a hospital setting’ set out to explore how different groups of health professionals evaluated the useability of EHRs and the associated risks of burnout, insomnia and turnover intention.

The opinions of 1,424 health professionals working at a Norwegian University Hospital were sought, six months after a new EHR was implemented.

While EHRs can enhance the quality and efficiency of healthcare delivery, their impact on staff was found to be considerably less positive.

Across those involved in the study, all reported an unacceptably low useability level for the EHR six months after the go-live. Those who reported the lowest levels of useability were most likely to suffer from burnout, insomnia and have the intention to seek a job elsewhere.

🚨Upcoming events

29 October 2025, ICC Birmingham – Shared Care Record Summit