King's Health Partners Digital Health Hub

Digital Health technologies can make a positive difference to the outcomes of patient treatment, management and care. Improving digital services and the sharing and use of data will also save time and resources so that staff can better focus on delivering medical and social care. Examples of such technologies include data collected through smartphones. For example, the ZOE COVID Symptom Study App used during the pandemic was jointly developed by King's College London, and now has more than four million users. Other digital technologies include wearable devices which can help monitor heart rate, activity and sleep and remotely assess and help manage a wide range of conditions. For example, the £23M Innovative Medicines Initiative RADAR-CNS led by King's has pioneered their use in depression, multiple sclerosis and epilepsy.

Our aim is to enable the development of new digital technologies and reduce the time it takes for these to benefit patient care. The King's Health Partner (KHP) Digital Health Hub will do this by helping researchers, health and social care staff, patients and industry to work together better. We also hope to increase the availability of such technologies nationally by offering support to enable new businesses to grow rapidly, thereby making a more immediate difference to patients' lives.

Digital health technologies have lots of potential but their widespread use is limited by:
- A lack of examples of how clinicians, academics, engineers, quality assurance experts, health economists, patients and end users can best work together during development

- Specific gaps in training and knowledge amongst the different groups, for example:

- Academic and industry technologists may have trouble understanding NHS systems and fail to engage with the end users of the technologies they are trying to develop, such as health care providers, patients and carers. They may not know about or understand the complex regulatory pathway which needs to be followed before such technologies can be used in clinical practice.

- Clinical specialists may lack the appropriate technical skills such as data analyses, coding and programming languages to help them develop digital applications they think will be helpful to their patients.

The KHP Digital Health Hub will help to overcome the barriers to the rapid development and use of digital technologies nationally. It will be an accessible "ecosystem" comprising specialists from different sectors working together to improve understanding and use of digital technologies and addressing the government's long-term goals for health and social care. With our partners, we will connect the digital health research community to the substantial opportunities for investment in London and our diverse and world leading healthcare research environment. We have brought together a wealth of expertise from across KHP, including King's College London and partner NHS Trusts, patients and industry collaborators, to provide support and training, and create opportunities for the acceleration of digital health across the UK. KHP includes seven mental health and physical healthcare hospitals and many community sites with ~4.8 million patient contacts each year and a combined annual turnover of more than £3.7 billion.

The KHP Digital Health Hub will provide:
- proven expertise, infrastructure and experience of co-creation and commercialisation
- a three-way clinical, academic and industry partnership
- a physical location where technology developers can work collaboratively, and
- an excellent track record in training which will be offered to all our partners across the health and social care sectors.
With the right support and networks in place, digital health technologies have the power to transform patient care and experiences across the UK. The knowledge and expertise is all there, and together we can make sure it is shared, translated and built upon, at every step of the way.