The Priority Digital Health Challenge 2025 featured on Talking HealthTech

We’re excited to share that the Priority Digital Health Challenge 2025 was recently featured on the latest episode of Talking HealthTech, hosted by Peter Birch. The episode brings together the judges and winners of the challenge.

The discussion explored how digital health solutions are being created for underserved and priority populations by innovators working closely with their communities. Both challenge winners have already begun their journey of app creation. Professor Caroline Donovan is transforming her evidence-based child sleep programme into a consumer-friendly app, while Dr Sarah Hanieh is developing a culturally tailored nutrition literacy tool for refugee and migrant communities.

Adjunct Professor Annette Schmiede, CEO of the Digital Health CRC and a Challenge judge, reflected on the gap between evidence-backed solutions and real-world adoption. What stood out to her was how many entries came from people deeply embedded in their communities. These community-rooted approaches, once digitised and backed by evidence, have the potential to deliver meaningful impact.

Building on this theme of impact and adoption, Leon Young, CEO of Cogniss and a judge at the Challenge, noted that underserved communities and conditions are often overlooked by traditional care models. Digital health offers a pathway to close those gaps, but stand-alone apps solving niche problems struggle to gain adoption at scale. He added that this is why Cogniss is launching Ripple, a series of global challenges that bring together cohorts of innovators focused on priority populations and conditions. The idea is that a cluster of solutions with a specific focus could make adoption much easier for health systems.

Listen to the full episode below, and visit ripplechallenge.org to learn more about Ripple and the challenges ahead.