For health businesses that need to reach clinicians and NHS decision-makers, specialist healthcare trade media offers a direct route to influence. These titles, while niche, are highly trusted - and new research by Vuelio finds coverage from specialist titles is frequently cited by AI search engines due to their specialist knowledge and the fact their content often isn’t hidden behind a paywall.
For UK health tech, medtech and digital health businesses that want to establish their credibility and expertise, one of the most influential trade titles is Digital Health.
Digital Health provides daily news and analysis on the UK health IT sector, covering developments across the NHS and the private sector.
With 76,000+ average monthly users, 55,000+ newsletter subscribers and a readership spanning NHS IT decision-makers across acute, primary and community care, Digital Health is often the publication that health tech companies want their brands featured in.
But how can a health tech business win coverage in this leading specialist title?
In this blog, we’ll take an in-depth look at the kinds of stories Digital Health covers, providing you with an idea of how you could potentially land coverage.
Five routes into Digital Health
Digital Health covers a wide variety of health tech and IT news, offering health tech brands various avenues for securing coverage. They include:
Standalone news articles: Dedicated pieces focused on a single story. This should be the priority target for any health tech brand wanting to maximise its coverage potential.
Opinion pieces: Articles from sector leaders sharing interesting views and insights.
Digital Health Coffee Time Briefings: Concise round-ups of news stories where new product launches, data-led stories (from surveys to academic papers) and funding rounds can all make the cut.
Makers and Shakers updates: New appointments and career moves. While the list leans towards NHS roles, notable appointments in the independent sector can make an appearance.
Digital Health Unplugged Podcast: Running since 2019, Unplugged covers key stories and issues in health, with guests from NHS trusts, government health agencies, and clinicians.
Alongside these, Digital Health publishes white papers and case studies, though these are often sponsored.
The standalone story checklist: could you make the cut?
To give the best chance of generating standalone articles, we apply our breakthrough news formula to craft campaigns that are impossible to ignore, impossible to deny and possible to lead. We’ve found that health tech businesses with stories that manage all three can go from a quick Coffee Time mention to a dedicated story.
Each of the campaigns below was designed to pass all three tests. We’ve used them to illustrate three questions worth asking of any story:
Are you demonstrating leadership?
Health tech companies that are working with NHS organisations to tackle important challenges, whether that’s improving patient safety or making the workforce more efficient, are common focuses of stories. While the NHS institution will often lead the story, the provider that is enabling it to make positive changes through innovation wins the right to be prominently featured.
Case in point: We helped our client Omnicell secure a standalone news article on a ‘first of its kind’ interoperable digital medicines management system pilot with its trust partner, University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire.
Are you showing impact?
Trade journalists want to see impact. If your technology is already active, can you highlight credible data from the deployment, or demonstrate scale (such as how many staff or patients it will benefit)?
In practice: for Accurx, we led with the scale of its AI note-taking technology rollout with University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust and University Hospitals of Northamptonshire Group, securing them a rare headline mention. This meant 10,000 clinicians gaining access to the tech and the solution supporting 2.5 million outpatient appointments a year.
Are you highlighting a consequential issue?
Outside of technology launches, Digital Health will cover policy-related news. This gives credible companies an opportunity to highlight important issues relevant to patients and NHS leaders.
How this works: We used this approach for Big Health to encourage national procurement of its NICE-recommended digital CBT for insomnia programme, Sleepio. Despite being recommended by NICE, it was not yet available to the majority of patients in England. When the US version won FDA approval, we used that milestone to draw a powerful comparison with the lack of access in England, leading to a dedicated story on the issue. Following this campaign, which also landed in national media and gained political support, the Department of Health and Social Care committed to undertaking a process to secure national access to digital CBT for insomnia.
Having something to say
It’s not just news. Digital Health also offers a platform for sector leaders to provide viewpoint and opinion articles that speak to the priorities and needs of its audience.
NHS, government and third-sector organisations are the most often featured voices in these articles. As a result, for joint campaigns with NHS trusts, it is often most effective for the thought leadership to come from a key player at your partner organisation, as their voice is more likely to cut through and more likely to be trusted by the people you are trying to convert.
Practising effective healthcare thought leadership can be hard. It requires unique perspectives that are evidence-based and consistent, a willingness to tackle complex and emerging industry challenges, and an ability to influence the perspectives and behaviours of others. You can read more about our approach to healthcare thought leadership here.
Test your story with us
Coverage in titles like Digital Health can put your name in front of the people who commission technology at NHS trusts, build credibility with investors and partners and may shape what AI says about you.
If you’re looking to reach NHS IT and health tech decision-makers through high-quality media coverage that titles like Digital Health offer, get in touch for a free story audit. We can work with you to identify your most effective news options and routes. Contact us using the form below.
