Digital Health's "Spotify Moment": Scottish Government Head of Innovation on Ripple Scale
Heather Cook, Managing Director of Ripple Scale, recently joined host Jessica Sumourou, Co-founder of SomX, on the Health Tech Pigeon podcast, alongside Fiona McCormick, an NHS speech and language therapist and app developer, and Toby Croft, Head of Innovation for Health at the Scottish Government. The conversation covered why so many promising digital health innovations still struggle to scale beyond a pilot.
Heather drew on her own experience leading three evidence-based digital health businesses, none of which scaled past pilot stage, to make the case that the sector's problem isn't a shortage of innovation. She described watching clinical entrepreneurs reach the top of what she calls the first mountain, an MVP, a pilot, some early evidence, only to face a choice between stepping out of clinical practice to become a chief executive or watching a promising product stall.
Fiona's own experience illustrated that choice directly. She built her speech and language therapy app on Cogniss to address gaps she encountered as an NHS clinician, and received guidance and support from the Health Innovation East programme. She spoke candidly about the burden of navigating digital assurance processes alongside her clinical role, noting that it isn't the best use of a clinician's time or expertise.
A unique perspective came from Toby, offering an outside-in view from the government. He compared Ripple Scale's model to what Spotify did for music streaming, replacing a fragmented, one-at-a-time way of accessing content with a single trusted platform. He also pointed to Ripple Scale's crowdfunded, citizen-owned structure as a meaningful signal of assurance for health systems evaluating new digital infrastructure, and argued that models like this help address a deeper interoperability gap, giving innovators a shared route to market rather than requiring every supplier to solve integration alone.
That's the gap Ripple Scale exists to close. Built on the Cogniss platform, which now underpins more than 50 digital health products with 60 more in development, Ripple Scale curates proven solutions into portfolios by clinical pathway, paying innovators a royalty rather than requiring them to build and run a company to reach patients.
Watch the full episode below.
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