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NHS Innovation Accelerator

ORCHA

Founded by NHS clinicians, ORCHA is the world’s leading, independent health and care app evaluation and distribution organisation. ORCHA delivers localised App Libraries and digital health recommendation tools to NHS organisations in 50% of UK regions. Each Library includes COVID-19-specific apps, and solutions to aid self-management, all assessed by ORCHA.

  • Virtual care
  • Self-management
ORCHA logo

ORCHA provides tailored App Libraries for NHS organisations across the UK, all of which include COVID-19 specific apps, and digital health solutions which empower patients to self-manage their own health and wellbeing.

Due to the COVID-19 crisis, the role of apps to support physical and mental health, lifestyle-management, condition-management, remote care, and as a potential means of slowing the spread of COVID-19, has grown in importance and relevance.

Each App Library ORCHA creates for NHS organisations includes such digital health solutions that help support the system by providing resources for remote health-management. Health and care professionals, and service users, can search ORCHA’s App Libraries for condition-specific solutions, and filter the results to prioritise COVID-19 support apps. Professionals using an ORCHA App Library can also recommend apps directly to their patients and service users via text or email.

Not only do apps provide remote alternatives at a time of reduced face-to-face appointments, but recommending apps to patients can also help to free up non-urgent appointments for more urgent needs.

In addition to having undergone ORCHA’s Baseline Review, which assesses apps according to their Clinical Assurance, Data Privacy, and User Experience, all COVID-19 solutions which are labelled as such across our App Libraries, have been evaluated against further stringent standards.

There has been and continues to be a clear demand for digital health solutions; across our App Libraries serving of millions of patients, we have seen the number of site visitors increase dramatically throughout the pandemic. In just one week, we saw an increase of 182.5% in app downloads from our Libraries, and a 6,500% increase in app recommendations by health and care professionals.

ORCHA designed its digital health innovation to support the pressures that came with COVID-19, but also to prepare the NHS for the repercussions that would follow the pandemic.

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