A new platform promoting UK digital health innovation to the world

The UK is a global leader and innovator in healthcare. It’s home to one of the largest medtech industries in the world. It's a global hub for life sciences (second only to the US), with a unique and collaborative ecosystem across government, business, academia and the NHS, and has the strongest biomedical pipeline in Europe.

It leads in its research capabilities and has a rich history of innovation, developing new drugs, devices and therapies. There are opportunities for investors and businesses across all these areas.

It is the role of Healthcare UK (part of the DHSC) to promote the sector to overseas markets and increase the UK's share of healthcare services exports. It helps companies do more business abroad and helps overseas healthcare organisations find a UK provider with the expertise and services they need.

To this end, as a marketing tool, it had a listing of all UK healthcare organisations who are ready to partner with overseas markets and export their unique and innovative products and services. The problem was, it was on a PDF.

This had to be manually updated every time a company detail changed, which was time consuming, expensive and prone to human error. The data base was often out of date, and wasn't searchable by interested procurement parties.

It was time to go digital.

What we did

Our mission was to create a unique, custom-built digital tool containing all the companies Healthcare UK (HCUK) wants to promote. It had to be easily searchable across categories and companies had be able to edit their own information.

User Experience and development

We designed a completely bespoke UI and UX, with a fully customised front-end, developed with Wordpress. We chose Wordpress for its ability to control content, and its easy-to-use dashboard.

Our main concern was the process for companies to update their details, with 100+ users who had varying levels of digital experience. We built publishing capabilities to assign users different levels of access to edit their information, and to notify both parties at each step of the submission, sign-off and publishing process. 

Through testing and iterating, we tailored the process and built a frictionless experience for users, and created a training document for all stakeholders. We custom built the database that houses all of the different company admins to be provide flexibility specific client requirements. We also custom built the search functionality, so that visitors looking for UK partners and talent can search by category, subcategory and company name.

User Interface

Our look and feel followed HCUK’s existing branding guidelines. We focused on designing a digital experience that looks good and is easy to navigate on a tablet, as these are often used to display information at HCUK events. We made it easily searchable so that potential partners and commissioning bodies can find providers offering what they need.

Outcome

The Digital Health Playbook, launched in January 2024, features 180+ selected healthcare companies, each offering something unique and who are committed to innovation, collaboration and international expansion. Categories include clinical care, out-of-hospital care, insights and analysis, core infrastructure, quality and efficiency, screening and diagnostics and more. It's a significant marketing and engagement tool for HCUK, helping to promote UK businesses and boosting the growth of companies, the sector and the UK economy.