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
🤝 Digital health company Wellola has partnered with professional services provider Org to provide patient portal technology to NHS and private healthcare providers. The companies will offer tailored consultations to help organisations assess their needs and deploy patient engagement solutions effectively, combining Wellola’s Portasana patient portal platform with Org’s strategic and professional advisory services.
🤖 Care Control has launched an AI tool for its digital care management platform which is designed to support care providers in making faster and more predictive care decisions. MargoAI analyses real-time data across touchpoints like health metrics, incident reports and care plans to flag opportunities for early intervention.
✨ Stepping Hill Hospital in Stockport has gone live with the first deployment of Spark TSL’s Fusion platform in the UK. The hospital, which looks after a population of 350,000 people in Greater Manchester, replaced its outdated Hospedia bedside units with modern Spark Fusion Bedside Units in February 2025. The platform gives patients access to a greater range of entertainment, information and communications services.
🍎 Data-driven insights from Wales’s National Data Resource’s Analytics Learning Programme (ALP) are supporting a project to help communities across the country develop better nutrition skills. The Nutrition Skills for Life initiative, delivered by NHS dietitians, now uses a dashboard to track its impact. This was made possible by ALP, which provided the technical expertise in digitalisation and data visualisation.
☀️ Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has received almost £700,000 to boost its efforts to tackle the climate emergency and create a greener NHS. The funding, from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, will support the installation of more than 1,000 solar panels, estimated to generate 384 MWh of electricity a year for the next 25 years. This is the equivalent to powering 130 UK homes each year.
❓Did you know?
Wearable digital health tools could help people with type 2 diabetes (T2D) to stick to exercise regimes that help them to keep the condition under control, according to a study, published in BMJ Open on 27 March 2025.
Researchers studied the behaviour of recently-diagnosed T2D patients in Canada and the UK as they followed a home-based physical activity programme. Some of the participants wore a smartwatch paired with a health app on their smartphone.
They discovered that participants using wearable technology were more than 10 times more likely to start exercising and more than twice as likely to still be exercising a year later compared to those who didn’t use the tech.
📖 What we’re reading
The book ‘Personal Health Records for Governments (2025)’, co-authored by Mohammad Al-Ubaydli, founder and chief executive of Patients Know Best (PKB), and Federica Andreoni, project manager at PKB, explores the hurdles facing global governments in achieving comprehensive personal health record (PHR) systems.
The book reviews the PHR initiatives of 16 countries, analysing their development, implementation and remaining critical gaps. It demonstrates a growing recognition among governments that providing citizens access to personal health data is fundamental to sustainable 21st century healthcare.
The foreword is written by former Estonian president Kersti Kaljulaid, whose country is widely regarded as a leader in digital health.
Estonia has successfully overcome one of the biggest challenges faced by most nations – data fragmentation – by standardising medical data and exchange protocols.
Al-Ubaydli said: “Governments are recognising the importance of patient data access, which is a vital step.
“But to truly activate the ‘underutilized workforce’ – the patients themselves – we must enable them to contribute their own health information.
“This is the missing piece in national PHR architectures and core to a truly patient centric model where the citizen can become a provider in their own care.”
🚨 Upcoming events
29–30 April, London – GS1 UK Healthcare Conference 2025
