Ripple Women's Digital Health Challenge 2025 winners announced
Women’s Digital Health Challenge Winners Announced
Two pioneering, clinically-led digital app solutions have won the Ripple Women’s Digital Health Challenge - a global innovation programme, delivered by Cogniss in partnership with the Health Innovation Network (the Network) and Amazon Web Services (AWS).
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.
1. 'NVP Minds' (University of Oxford)
‘NVP Minds’, led by Associate Professor Fiona Challacombe, an academic and registered clinical psychologist from the University of Oxford, aims to support women suffering from Hyperemesis Gravidarum (HG), a debilitating condition that causes severe nausea and vomiting in pregnancy. HG affects 30,000 pregnancies in the UK annually, with up to 50% of sufferers report considering ending the pregnancy as a direct result of the condition due to the severe physical and psychological toll.
2. 'HearHer' (University of Bath)
The other winning proposal, ‘HearHer’, developed by Dr. Faith Martin, a clinical and health psychologist and Senior Lecturer at the University of Bath, targets maternal mental wellbeing for the over 2 million mothers in the UK supporting children with mental health or developmental challenges. This group is known to experience chronic stress and emotional exhaustion whilst 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 and there is almost no structure psychological support for themselves.
Both solutions will be developed on the Cogniss no-code digital health platform, before receiving bespoke support from the Health Innovation Network, including identification of pilot sites, study design, evidence generation, economic evaluation, with the aim of supporting adoption into NHS pathways.
The Women’s Digital Health Challenge 2025 aims to accelerate the development of patient-facing digital health solutions that address urgent priorities in women’s health.
Applications were invited to address priorities for women’s health including, but not limited to, menopause, maternal and perinatal care, gynaecological cancers, fertility, mental health, pelvic and cardiovascular health, to improve health equity. The winning solutions were selected by an expert judging panel that included representatives from the World Health Organisation, the Scottish Government and Digital Health and Care Wales, for their potential to address significant, systemic gaps in care.
From February 2026, Professor Challacombe and Dr Martin will join a 12-month programme delivered by Cogniss, the Health Innovation Network and Amazon Web Services (AWS), alongside a global cohort of innovators yet to be selected.
Fiona said, "Several of the health experts building this app with me have lived through HG themselves. We bring the clinical reality and the 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% of pregnancies impacted by this devastating condition.”
Dr. Martin said, "Mothers supporting children with mental health or developmental challenges are often coping at home, waiting for for CAMHS support, 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.”
Women’s Health Minister of the UK, Baroness Merron said, “Closing these gaps in women's health is key. It is 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.”
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.”
Steph Potts, Head of Portfolio, Health Innovation Yorkshire & Humber, said, “Women’s health is a national priority, and these winning solutions demonstrate exactly the kind of practical, clinically-grounded innovation the NHS needs.Through our involvement in the Ripple Challenge we will help these ideas to develop into valuable propositions for the NHS, to ensure they deliver benefits to patients, and increase NHS productivity through earlier intervention and digital support."
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.”
Looking Ahead
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 neglect 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.
Media Contact
Niv Dangwal
Chief Marketing Officer, Cogniss
niv@cogniss.com | +61 466991696
About Ripple
Ripple is a global initiative that runs digital health challenges designed to accelerate innovation in priority health areas. Ripple connects innovators, health systems, funders, and partners to move promising ideas into scalable solutions.
About Cogniss
Cogniss is a no-code ecosystem that enables healthcare experts and organisations to create advanced patient-facing digital health apps. No coding or design skills required. Its unique point-and-click interface empowers health innovators to build tailored apps, at a fraction of the time and cost required by code-based development.
About the Health Innovation Network
There are 15 health innovation networks across England, commissioned to be the boots-on-the-ground support to local health and care teams to deliver health innovation, creating improved health and economic growth in all communities.
About Amazon Web Services (AWS)
AWS is the trusted technology and innovation partner to the global healthcare and life sciences industry, providing unmatched reliability, security, and data privacy. AWS for Healthcare & Life Sciences provides an offering of AWS services and AWS Partner solutions used by thousands of customers globally.