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

  Simplyhealth has recently extended its Go Digital campaign to 30 June 2025. The company has allocated a £250,000 charitable donation to the Woodland Trust as an incentive for its customers to move to digital, paperless options. Originally launched in September 2024, the campaign is to encourage Simplyhealth and Denplan customers to move to digital solutions. Every email address registered during the campaign will mean a donation to the Woodland Trust, to help fund its Free School and Community Tree packs. The first four months saw 43,545 customers register their email addresses delivering a total of £75,101 donation.

CharmHealth has launched CharmHealthHub, a marketplace for the entire community of healthcare stakeholders. The new hub replaces the company’s previous marketplace CharmHealthApps, and is designed to unite partners who will elevate care standards through the strategic use of technology.

International experts from 79 countries have worked together to publish a new framework for the adoption of digital health curricula in medical education. The Digital Health Competencies in Medical Education (DECODE) framework is published in JAMA Network Open and aims to educate and prepare future doctors for the ongoing digital health transformation. The framework discusses the key skills and knowledge needed for medicine graduates and includes contributions from experts at Imperial, King’s College London, Nonyang Technological University and Singapore (NTU Singapore).

Amie Technologies and Blüm Health have been awarded a Eureka Eurostars grant to develop Pal-PCS, an AI-enabled predictive solutions that can detect and prevent complications in patients with life-limiting illnesses. The solutions leverages patient- and family-reported outcomes alongside leading treatment guidelines to generate real-time risk assessments to help enhance at-home supportive care.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) published new guidance into digital mental health technologies on 3 February to support manufacturers and protect users. The new guidance explores in more detail how to define and communicate the intended purpose of such technology, when a digital mental health technology is considered a medical device under UK law, and how risk classification is determined.

Did you know

Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has shared an evaluation of its virtual royal infirmary (VRI) programme, demonstrating the impact of its “hospital-level care directly to patients’ homes”.

Since its launch in June 2023, the Virtual Ward (Hospital at Home) service has brought hospital-level care directly to patients’ homes, reducing unnecessary hospital admissions and supporting early discharge.

What we’re reading

A new post on www.psychologytoday.com is exploring how technology is revolutionising mental healthcare through digital tools.

The Top 10 Applications of Technology in Mental Healthcare looks at the use of apps, virtual reality, wearable tech, virtual therapy, AI prevention, digital communities, gamification, AI chatbots, machine learning personalised treatment and digital art.

It notes that this fusion of psychology and technology “isn’t just about convenience — it’s about creating more personalized, accessible, and effective care for everyone.” It also underlines that the goal isn’t to remove the human element when it comes to mental healthcare but rather to strengthen it through the use of digital tools, and to ensure that support is as accessible, personalised and effective as it possibly can be.

 Upcoming events

February 29, The University of Edinburgh – AIMday HealthTech