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Two pioneering, clinically-led digital app solutions have won the Ripple Women’s Digital Health Challenge – a global innovation programme.

Health Innovation Yorkshire & Humber is a partner in delivering the Challenge, which is led by Cogniss and Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the national Health Innovation Network.

The two winning app ideas, developed by clinicians and researchers from the Universities of Oxford and Bath respectively, aim to close the gap on women’s health by offering vital support to women with their mental wellbeing – specifically those suffering with Hyperemesis Gravidarum and to those who support children with mental health or developmental challenges.

‘NVP Minds’ is led by Associate Professor Fiona Challacombe at the University of Oxford, an academic and clinical psychologist. It focuses on supporting women experiencing Hyperemesis Gravidarum (HG), a debilitating condition that causes severe nausea and vomiting in pregnancy. HG affects at least 30,000 pregnancies in the UK annually.

Up to 50 per cent of sufferers report considering ending the pregnancy as a direct result of the condition due to the severe physical and psychological toll.

Fiona said: “Several of the health experts building this app with me have lived through HG themselves. We bring clinical reality and first-hand understanding of the condition. With the national charity Pregnancy Sickness Support beside us, we want to build a solution that makes a difference to the 3.6 per cent of pregnancies impacted by this devastating condition.”

The other winning proposal is ‘HearHer’, led by Dr Faith Martin, a clinical and health psychologist and Senior Lecturer at the University of Bath.  The app targets maternal mental wellbeing for more than two million mothers in the UK supporting children with mental health or developmental challenges.

It is known that these parents experience chronic stress and emotional exhaustion while supporting their children to navigate specialist services such as Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) or Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) support, which can take years to access.

Dr Martin said, “Mothers supporting children with mental health or developmental challenges are often coping at home, waiting for support from mental health services or managing their child’s distress between appointments and trying to keep everything else going.

“HearHer is designed to provide evidence-based, personalised psychological support during those critical gaps, helping mothers to sustain their own wellbeing while they care for their children.”

Both solutions will be developed on the Cogniss no-code digital health platform. The Health Innovation Network will support the next steps, including identification of pilot sites, study design, evidence generation, economic evaluation, and adoption into NHS pathways.

Women’s Health Minister Baroness Merron said: “Closing these gaps in women’s health is key. It unacceptable that so many women are waiting too long for the care they need, and we are changing this through renewing the Women’s Health Strategy.

“Through our 10 Year Health Plan, we are also making access to severe morning sickness (HG) medications easier, ending the postcode lottery of treatment.

“What is so encouraging about the winning solutions is that they bring frontline clinical insight, lived experience and academic rigour together to address real, persistent gaps in care through digital solutions. I am excited to see these solutions coming to life and reaching women that need them.”

Steph Potts, Head of Portfolio at Health Innovation Yorkshire & Humber, said: “The winning entries and the amazing Challenge applicants are tackling some of the most overlooked yet high-impact areas of women’s health, with innovations that are deeply rooted in lived experience and real system need. It’s a privilege to help these solutions to scale up and genuinely improve outcomes for women and girls while reducing pressure on overstretched services.”

Leon Young, CEO, Cogniss, said: “There were too many exceptional submissions for this Challenge, all doable and all tackling urgent gaps in women’s health. Through Ripple, we are building a publishing and delivery infrastructure that will enable more innovators to focus on patients and outcomes, while we and our partners support the pathway into everyday NHS care.”

Kira Levy, Head of Healthcare, UK, AWS, said: “Secure, scalable cloud infrastructure is now fundamental to how modern health systems deploy digital services safely and securely. We are proud to support Ripple and the teams building solutions that align with NHS priorities around prevention, early intervention and care beyond hospital settings.”

The Ripple Women’s Digital Health Challenge is being developed as a repeatable model to create a pipeline for solutions that are deployable at scale. By tackling long-standing structural gaps and contributing to addressing the £11 billion cost of women’s health challenges in the UK economy, the programme is also contributing to the global effort to close a health gap estimated to cost the world US$1 trillion by 2040.