From frustration to fix: why we built The Health and Care Expert

Posted on by DigitalHealth.London

The latest DigitalHealth.London Launchpad cohort, which was delivered between September 2025 and November 2025, supported 20 early-stage digital health companies across London. Across 10 weeks, the companies were equipped with the essential knowledge they need to introduce new products and services for current NHS and social care challenges.

To mark the launch of The Health and Care Expert, co-founders Jodie Adkin and Elliott Ward share their personal motivation behind the development of this AI-powered service navigation and clinical decision support tool.

Every single week doctors tell us about patients who have been brought to hospital by ambulance. Not because they need to be there, but because no one knew there was a service that could have treated them at home.

Often, the service directories that ambulance crews and A&E staff have available are outdated or go unused, so admission becomes the easiest option.

Unfortunately, this story isn’t rare. It’s the reason we built The Health and Care Expert.

The problem we could not unsee

It is estimated that 20% of emergency admissions are potentially avoidable with the right care in place. Furthermore, analysis by Nuffield Trust revealed that 1 in 6 admissions to hospital were potentially preventable.

The cost of these potentially preventable admissions isn’t just financial – it leads to patients waiting longer for the care they need, capacity pressures in Trusts, and clinicians losing faith in the system.

Between us, we have spent decades inside the NHS, from working on the frontline to commissioning, transformation and improvement roles. No matter where we worked, the same problem kept surfacing: clinicians wasting time trying to find the right services for patients, or patients ending up in the wrong place as clinicians didn’t know a better option existed.

We saw the human cost of this every day, including delayed discharges; preventable admissions; and clinicians demoralised by how complex the health and care system has become.

This wasn’t just inefficient, it was harmful. The problem was, and still is, everywhere.

From Harvard to home: designing the fix

When we studied AI in Healthcare at Harvard Medical School, one principle stood out: if a problem is too complex or too low-value to solve with human capacity alone, get the computers to assist.

The scale of the problem meant we couldn’t just build a better search tool, we had to build a full end-to-end solution that could be used by everyone – from a junior doctor on their first A&E shift and a community pharmacist managing complex needs. It also had to be fast, intuitive and always accurate.

So, we built The Health & Care Expert. This AI-powered tool helps clinicians find the right service for every patient, whether it’s primary care or urgent care, community rehab or mental health services. Clinicians describe the patient’s needs, and the tool, using prompt questions,  guides them to the right service, with referral criteria, contact details and local availability.

The automated service directory constantly updates, with a well-trained, continually learning AI that understands patient context, service criteria and the nuances of clinical decision-making.

No more clunky databases. No more guesswork. Just the right service, at the right time.

Launchpad learnings: from idea to impact

Joining the DigitalHealth.London Launchpad programme was a turning point. It gave us the space to refine our messaging, pressure-test our assumptions, and get everything in place to launch and be ready to rapidly scale.

We’ve had powerful feedback from clinicians, who say the tool saves them hours each week and improves referral quality. We are also unlocking new analytics to help commissioners allocate resources more efficiently and plan proactively.

Why we keep going

Even a 10% reduction in avoidable admissions yields six‑figure cost avoidance per hospital, every single year.

But it’s not just about numbers. It’s about trust. Every clinician deserves the tools to do their job well, and every patient deserves care that’s timely, appropriate and empowering.

We are looking for a Place, or a whole Integrated Care System (ICS), who are keen to pilot the tool in their area. We want to partner with an organisation with the same values as us, an area that is passionate about creating the best environment for their workforce and doing the right thing for patients.

Let’s make invisible services visible. Let’s make the right care easier to find. Let’s build the NHS that is fit for the future.

Want to find out more? Contact hello@thehealthandcareexpert.com

The Health and Care Expert is part of cohort 8 of the DigitalHealth.London Launchpad programme.

The DigitalHealth.London Launchpad programme is part-funded by the UK Government via the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF). It is delivered by the Health Innovation Network (HIN) South London in partnership with the Office of Life Sciences, CW+, NHS England and the Mayor of London.

For more information, please visit https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-
shared-prosperity-fund-prospectus.

Funded by UK Government. DigitalHealth.London. Health Innovation Network South London. CW+. NHS. Office for Life Sciences. Supported by the Mayor of London.

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