Implementing digital interventions: Aligning evidence-based innovation

Our Digital Therapies theme hosted a successful event for researchers, clinicians, people with lived experience and policymakers. The event on Thursday 29 January explored how digital health interventions can be effectively implemented within the NHS, in line with the Department of Health and Social Care’s 10-Year Health Plan for England.

Highlights of the event, 'Implementing Digital Interventions: Aligning evidence-based innovation with the DHSC 10 Year Roadmap' included:

• Perspectives from DHSC, healthcare professionals, researchers, and industry leadership.
• The journey of digital tools through trials, licensing, and regulatory approval
• Roundtable sessions on structural and policy change, stakeholder engagement, and pathways to adoption
• Discussions on the role of AI and the future of digital therapeutics

The well attended event, held at Guy’s Hospital, provided a space to connect and collaborate on the future of digital therapies.

Watch a video with highlights and interviews from the event:

Through a mix of presentations, lived experience stories, and roundtable discussions, the event unpacked the real-world challenges of digital therapy adoption, shared insights from across research, clinical practice, industry and policy, and explored how we can enable the uptake and access of innovations in this field. 

Speakers included: David Lawson MCIPS, Director of Medical Technology and Innovation, DHSC; Dr Nayan Kalnad, CEO and Co-Founder of Avegen; Dr Lisa Harper, Centre for Innovative Therapeutics (C-FIT), King’s College London and lived experience experts. 

David Lawson MCIPS, Director of Medical Technology and Innovation, DHSC (pictured above, left) said:

“The NHS 10 Year Health Plan sets a clear ambition to shift from reactive, analogue care to proactive, digitally enabled prevention. This event offered valuable insights into emerging innovations and the key barriers that continue to slow adoption, alongside the opportunity to present national work that is underway to address these challenges, including a rule‑based pathway for digital technology adoption and new tools to support Trusts in comparing products and accelerating decisions. The 2026/27 period will be critical for implementing these frameworks and I look forward to ongoing collaboration across the system to enable us to realise the full potential of digital therapies within the Long Term Plan.”

Nayan Kalnad, CEO and co-founder of Avegen (pictured above, right), said:

"The event was a powerful reminder of what’s possible when innovation meets collaboration.

It was a wonderful opportunity to learn about the cutting-edge work being done at King’s College, to hear candidly about the challenges along the way - and, more importantly, how teams have overcome them. It was equally rewarding to share our own learnings from scaling innovations in practice.

I applaud Rona and Colette for taking the initiative to bring this community together. Realising the promise of digital therapies for humanity will require a truly collective effort - and gatherings like this are an important step in that direction."

The event was organised by the NIHR Maudsley BRC’s Digital Therapies theme in collaboration with the NIHR Leicester BRC.

Professor Rona Moss-Morris, Professor of Psychology as Applied to Medicine, Theme Lead for Digital Therapies at the NIHR Maudsley BRC, said

“The 10-year plan offers a fantastic opportunity for digital therapies to have real impact on our health and healthcare systems. There are an increasing number of exciting new innovations in the field but they continue to meet challenges in adoption and uptake. By bringing together stakeholders from a range of backgrounds to share knowledge and experience we hope to lay the foundations to overcome these challenges, align with the 10-year plan and create an infrastructure that can support digital therapies right through to their uptake by public and patients.”

Professor Colette Hirsch, Professor in Cognitive Clinical Psychology and Deputy Lead for Digital Therapies at the NIHR Maudsley BRC said:

“It’s been fantastic to get so many different perspectives in the same room: from lived experience to implementation scientists, start-ups and more established medtech companies. Together we have been able to really think about how to develop good digital interventions for mental health and, more importantly, how to get them taken up in clinical practice so people can benefit from research driven effective treatments.”