The digital health adoption challenge: the case for a digital health publisher

Leon Young joins Healthdirect CEO Bettina McMahon and clinical safety expert Chris Boyd-Skinner in this episode.

Leon Young, CEO of Cogniss and Founder and Executive Chairman of Ripple Scale, recently joined Peter Birch on Talking HealthTech, alongside Bettina McMahon, CEO of Healthdirect Australia, and clinical governance and digital health safety expert Chris Boyd-Skinner. The conversation explored why so many effective tools in women's health, mental health, children's health and long-term care never progress make it past pilot studies to serve patients and what would need to change for that to shift.

The panel started with the premise that digital health doesn't lack innovation. Leon pointed to a key bottleneck: the problem in getting the solutions safely and reliably into people's hands, at scale. Health systems are being asked to assess, procure and integrate hundreds of new solutions one at a time, a process that was never built to work at that volume.

Chris brought a clinical safety lens to the conversation, arguing that regulatory approval alone doesn't earn a clinician's trust. What actually matters, he said, comes down to whether a clinician can trust this for my patient right now, and whether that confidence holds up after months of updates and real-world use, not just at the point a tool was first assessed.

A central theme of the conversation was the need for new approaches that connect innovation with adoption. The panel explored the concept of digital health publishing, where trusted organisations curate, assure and distribute portfolios of digital health products, helping innovators focus on solving healthcare problems while simplifying adoption for health providers.

Bettina offered a useful way to frame the distribution problem itself: there are really two routes, direct to consumer, or a channel to commissioners. She noted that a publisher can help overwhelmed commissioners by bundling tools and simplifying that process for everyone involved, a model that maps closely to what Ripple Scale is building.

That's the gap Ripple Scale exists to close. The Ripple Women's Digital Health Challenge, a cohort of 26 innovators building solutions across underserved areas of women's health, is one early example of moving from isolated apps to a coordinated route to adoption.

Watch the full episode below.