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

💊 Hampshire and Isle of Wight Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust has shared plans to procure an electronic prescribing and medicines administration (ePMA) system. A prior information notice published by the trust on 16 October 2024 specifies that it is seeking a cloud-based ePMA solution that can be used by up to 800 prescribers across all care settings, including inpatients, community and clinics. 

💰 Diagnostic company Cirdan has secured £7.5 million in from the Investment Fund for Northern Ireland and investment management company 57 Stars. Cirdan, whose laboratory information systems and digital solutions are used in around 200 clinical labs and hospitals in 20 countries, will use the funding to fuel its global expansion.

🤖 Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust has partnered with accelerator specialists UP Ventures and venture capitalists Par Equity to launch the children and young people’s healthtech accelerator programme, KidsUP. It has selected 10 companies, including digital health company SleepCogni, to take part in a 12-week programme aimed at creating digital health devices and services. Participants will receive mentoring from clinicians and training alongside specialists from UP Ventures.

💡 Virgin Media O2 Business has announced that its Connect More programme has helped more than 1,220 people across London, Birmingham, and Manchester learn digital skills, including access to digital health services like the NHS App, since it launched a healthcare support scheme in June 2023. Park Medical Practice, in Greater Manchester, saw an increase of 352 repeat prescriptions ordered through the NHS app each month after Connect More ran a training session, saving an estimated 17 hours of staff time.

🩸 A cross-disciplinary team led by the University of Glasgow alongside researchers from the Universities of Nottingham and Strathclyde will explore whether manufactured stem cells can be used to treat blood cancers. The MAINSTREAM project, which is being supported by £11 million in funding by the UK Research and Innovation Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, will use technology including 3D printing to grow stem cells outside the body and determine whether they can be used to regrow new human tissue.

❓ Did you know? 

Femtech companies are less likely to get funding if they have a woman on the founding team, research published in The Guardian has revealed.

The analysis, conducted by researcher Ludovica Castiglia in partnership with consultancy firm FemHealth Insights, found that femtech companies founded by all-female teams receive 28% of venture capital funding, versus 38% for companies founded by all-male teams and 34% for mixed-gender teams. 

It also found that female femtech founders were less likely to secure funding if they use “advocacy” words in their funding applications, including “women’s rights”, “take control” or “freedom”.

Castiglia analysed 1,720 funding agreements made by 513 venture-backed femtech companies in UK, US and Canada for her study,

📖 What we’re reading

The report ‘Options for a future public health system in England‘, published by The Health Foundation on 15 October 2024, explores the state of the national and regional public health systems in England and whether a new public health executive agency should be established to address existing imbalances.

The report identifies four key challenges facing current healthcare systems: fragmentation, an absence of system leadership, a lack of political independence, and limited cross-government coordination.

It references the creation of the UK Health Security Agency and the Office of Health Improvement and Disparities, both of which were established to address specific challenges in the UK health system, and questions whether a similar agency should be set with “a dual mission of health improvement and health protection at national and regional levels.”

The report adds: “Without additional structural changes, national and regional public health systems and programmes in England would remain vulnerable to being deprioritised and rendered less effective in the future.

“Instead, the government has a chance now to establish public health structures that have the levers, stability and resilience required to meet the nation’s longer term challenges.”

🚨 Upcoming events

11 November, webinar – User-centred design: Empowering digital transformation in the NHS