The National Health Service (NHS) is one of the largest and best performinghealthcare systems in the world. It has provided universal coverage for 70 years, but today it is faced with the challenge of modernising its services to keep up with a rapidly digitising world. Growing financial pressure is also making it increasingly challengingto deliver the high quality care that all patients have come to expect. There isagrowing consensus that change is needed. In its Five Year Forward View, published in 2014, the NHS laidout six complementary approaches for achieving the necessary change including taking advantage of the information revolution and accelerating useful health innovation. Digital healthcare technologyis going to play an essentialrole in the ongoing transformation of the UK healthcare system.

So,what can the UK do to promote innovation in digital health? This paper seeks to answer that question by focusing on the startup ecosystem in the UK. Our research, based on interviewswith digital health entrepreneursand a review of available literature, addresses ways in which the policy environment for digital health startups could be better aligned with the NHS’s mission of improving the health and wellbeing of patients.