Health Tech Awards 2025: A message from the winners
We recently celebrated the Health Tech Awards 2025, where we announced the winners and highly commended entries for nine different categories. Now it’s time to hear from our winners directly, to find out more about their projects and what the awards mean to them.
Innovation of the Year: Strolll
“We’re delighted to be announced as HTN’s Innovation of the Year.”
Strolll’s digital therapeutic platform delivers gamified augmented reality rehabilitation through lightweight smart glasses. Instead of sporadic appointments or paper handouts, patients can engage in interactive rehab exercises anytime, in the hospital gym, on the ward, or at home after discharge.
Picture a patient walking down a virtual forest path overlaid on their hospital corridor, stepping over virtual logs to practise their gait, or reaching out to catch virtual objects to improve their balance. All the while, the AR system is delivering proven therapy exercises in the form of a game, one that’s fun, safe, and designed by clinicians and patients.
“Strolll addresses a critical NHS challenge: the vast rehabilitation delivery gap caused by workforce shortages. It delivers a truly disruptive innovation by transforming standard therapy into immersive AR-based rehabilitation through smart glasses, significantly increasing therapy time and adherence.” – Adekola Adepoju, HTN Awards Judge.
Major Project Go Live: UCLPartners, HN, NHS North East
“We are thrilled to be winning the HTN award for Major Project Go Live for our project.”
In 2024, NHS North East London launched a 3-year AI-driven clinical coaching programme with Health Navigator and UCLPartners, offering personalised proactive care, targeting patients at high risk of accessing unplanned care. Expected outcomes include saving 26,673 unplanned bed days and reducing A&E visits by 13,000 annually.
At its core is HN’s AI identified clinical coaching (AICC) service, comprising HN Predict’s high precision AI case finding of patients at high risk of needing unplanned emergency care up to six months in advance; HN Engage’s Patient Engagement and Screening Platform to facilitate the referral and engagement process for the clinical coaching intervention; and HN Proactive, which facilitates the operational process of referral, engagement and delivery. .
“This is a very innovative approach to reducing ED times and I was impressed with the statistics provided by the team demonstrating clear patient benefits.” – Sara Watkinson, highly specialist pharmacist – digital medicines and quality improvement at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and HTN Awards Judge.
Best Use of Digital and Data for NHS Trusts: Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital
“A massive thank you from Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital for the award of Best Use of Digital and Data for NHS Trusts.”
In April 2024, the trust identified legacy challenges within its Data Warehouse. By June 2025, it took a bold decision to temporarily pause national submissions, allowing teams to focus on designing a robust, scalable, and standards-compliant data solution.
In December, the trust proactively engaged with NHS England and the national FDP team to explore opportunities for strategic support. What followed was an exceptional cross-organisational effort that brought together close technical collaboration between FDP developers and the trust’s internal teams.
Rigorous testing cycles underpinned the delivery. The trust maintained a consistently transparent and inclusive approach and successfully reinstated its national data submissions, including CDS and SLAM, allowing it to meet statutory reporting requirements and avoid financial and compliance risks.
“Impressive scale and complexity, clear operational and strategic impact and a good example of innovation with strong governance.” – Roxana Seifer, programme manager – people transformation at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and HTN Awards Judge.
Best Solution for Clinicians: Daysix Ltd: The Trauma App
“Big thanks goes out to the clinicians involved in the project because they deserve the most credit.”
Designed by clinicians for clinicians, the Trauma App empowers teams in emergency care with real-time multi-user digital documentation and integrated decision support. It ensures adherence to protocols, streamlines workflows, reduces administrative burden, provides real-time analytics, enabling clinicians to enhance care quality.
The Trauma App is the result of a co-design and development process with clinicians from all major trauma centres (MTCs) in NHS Scotland, extensive clinical trials and peer review. It captures the full trauma case from standby call to patient discharge, including 34 key interventions, patient movements, and vital signs, instantly visible within the app and the hospital’s EPR. Cognitive aids, real-time prompts, and checklists help clinicians stay focused on what matters most. Decision support features, such as prompts for specialist input in burns or highlighting diagnosis on a ROTEM screen, assist clinicians in making faster, safer decisions.
“Trauma call and associated management can be organised chaos, often with paperwork being misplaced. Having an app with the associated framework and well designed UI would without doubt increase documentation standards and reduce delays in decision making.” – Joe Rouse, digital clinical lead, clinical application specialist, registered children’s nurse and HTN Awards Judge.
Patient Portal Project of the Year: Think Healthcare (Focus Group)
“Big thank you for the Patient Portal of the Year Award from HTN.”
Horizon Healthcare turned the idea of a “patient portal” on its head, launching the UK’s first voice-based portal fully integrated with SystmOne. Patients use any phone, 24/7, to book reviews, request prescriptions or fit notes and chase referrals – cutting 1,500 calls a month while boosting Google ratings to 4.3.
Virtual Care Navigator (VCN) delivers by phone integration, with prescription requests and queries, a spoken menu that walks patients through options, and tasks written to EPS prescriptions queue SystmOne.
The portal is fully integrated with major clinical systems (SystmOne, EMIS), and automates admin, not triage – freeing humans for nuanced access decisions. It’s also configurable to local workflows and is scalable, with rollout already underway to other Think Healthcare sites and PCN booking and vaccination modules next to be developed.
Most Promising Pilot: Map My Mole by Community Dermatology
“We’re over the moon to have won this award.”
Map My Mole offers a radically simple but effective intervention: patients receive a dermoscopic lens, a Dyplens, and access to an app guiding them through high-quality mole photography. Images are reviewed by UK-based consultant dermatologists, often within 24-48 hours, down from weeks, reducing patient anxiety and speeding up diagnosis and treatment where needed. For those without smartphones or confidence, community alternatives (pharmacies, mobile HCAs) provide flexible, equitable access.
From March – June 2024, it was trialled across three GP sites in Devon and Cornwall. Results included 1,126 cases reviewed, 989 GP appointments saved – buying GPs back 14,835 minutes, and two-week-wait referrals reduced by 64 percent. 216 secondary care referrals were avoided. Submission to result time was one day, 23 hours; and patient capture time was under 11 minutes. 73 percent of patients were aged 55+, and 62 percent of images were captured independently at home.
“Great potential to improve patient outcomes and satisfaction.” – Simon Moore, associate director of procurement at Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and HTN Awards Judge.
Best Health Tech Solution of the Year: Liva Healthcare
“We’re incredibly proud to announce that Liva Healthcare has been awarded Best Health Tech Solution of the Year at the HTN Health Tech Awards 2025 – a national awards programme that recognises innovation, impact and excellence across digital health and care in the UK.”
Liva Healthcare transforms the prevention and management of chronic conditions through its evidence-based digital health programmes. Embedded in NHS England and European public health systems, Liva delivers clinically proven outcomes, enhances care pathways, and enables the scaling of personalised care.
Findings from randomised controlled trials showed four out of ten people with elevated HbA1c at baseline normalised their levels below the Type 2 diabetes threshold within six months, an average sustained weight loss of 4.4 kg after 24 months, and a mean BMI reduction of 1.5 kg/m≤ after one year.
“Excellent use of app and patient empowerment to make a positive health change, impressive results, NHS engagement and reach into other countries.” – Dr Hina Lad RIBA ARB PhD, architect-healthcare planner research lead at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and HTN Awards Judge.
Digital Inclusion and Improving Health Inequalities: As Simple As That Technologies LTD (ASAT)
ASAT transforms dense medical language into clear, accessible, and personalised formats using natural language processing and linguistic simplification rules.
It is built specifically to assist people with low health literacy, cognitive impairments, linguistic barriers, and aging-related comprehension decline. It uses over 400 medical simplification rules which identify and simplify medical jargon, clinical abbreviations, and long sentence structures into step-by-step, readable, and visually guided outputs.
Key features include plain language rewriting of medical text, tailored to individual comprehension levels, simple actionable instructions for post-care or medication use, and optional read-aloud functionality for those with reading difficulties.
“One of the biggest challenges with making patient documentation avaliable is the use of medical lanuage and termanology. A solution to this without requiring a change to practice from the clinicans is excellent.” – Joe Rouse, digital clinical lead, clinical application specialist, registered children’s nurse and HTN Awards Judge
Best Use of Digital for Improving Care Pathways: Bolton NHS Foundation Trust
Bolton NHS Foundation Trust is the first in Greater Manchester to implement district nurse referrals via Sunrise EPR. By integrating care, the digital workflow enhances communication across services, speeds up referrals, and supports safer, more timely care.
The trust decided that to mitigate the issues and optimise the process, the district nurse referrals should be requested within the central Sunrise EPR, provided by Altera Digital Health. The configuration of the referral form included mandatory elements, embedded guidance and pop-up messages, and conditional logic to ensure the forms were accurately completed. This has meant that there are now fewer inappropriate referrals received, and the district nurses receive all crucial data elements that help them assess, prioritise, and schedule ongoing care.
“This end-to-end management system should be adopted by the NHS as a whole. Well done!” – Dr Hina Lad RIBA ARB PhD, architect-healthcare planner research lead, at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and HTN Awards judge
Congratulations to our winners!
Huge well done to all of our winners and thank you for showcasing your impactful projects with us. We’ve really enjoyed reading through each and every entry and look forward to our next Health Tech Awards.
