Care & services

Stockport NHS Foundation Trust has gone live with CardMedic across the organisation, enabling its 6,300-strong workforce to communicate more clearly and confidently with patients who face language or communication barriers. CardMedic is a digital healthcare communication platform that allows staff and patients to communicate safely and effectively irrespective of language barriers, cognitive impairment or literacy. [...]

Women must receive clearer warnings about the potentially fatal risks of home birth and should only be supported by experienced midwives, experts have said. The calls follow a coroner’s ruling in Rochdale, England, that Jennifer Cahill, 34, and her baby, Agnes Lily, died after a home birth in June 2024 due to “a gross failure [...]

At least 15 fertility patients are taking legal action to prevent their frozen embryos being destroyed after administrative errors left them at risk of losing their chance to have children. The group includes people with cancer and fertility problems who froze gametes (eggs and sperm) or embryos to improve their chances of conceiving later on, [...]

The NHS has made the morning-after pill free at almost 10,000 pharmacies in England, ending postcode lottery access to emergency contraception. Women can now obtain the emergency pill without charge at their local pharmacy, removing the need to visit a GP or attend a sexual health clinic. Some pharmacies had previously charged up to £30 [...]

Propel Healthtech West Yorkshire is calling on innovators with healthtech solutions to apply for its accelerator programme. The programme is free for successful applicants and provides enhanced business support, regulatory guidance, NHS networking and scaled growth advice. The accelerator has recently been allocated £4.5m in funding from the West Yorkshire Mayor’s investment Zone. The funding [...]

Thousands of people protested in Seville on Sunday after revelations that 2,300 women were not given the results of mammogram tests showing abnormalities that required follow-up care. The demonstrations targeted Andalusia’s regional government after it emerged that women who had mammograms – X-ray scans used to detect breast cancer – at public hospitals in recent [...]

NHS health checks will include questions about menopause for the first time, a move ministers say could help up to five million women in England. The Department of Health and Social Care said the new questions, to be developed over the coming months, could be introduced from 2026. Adults aged 40 to 74 without long-term [...]

By James Jackson, CEO at Digostics Gestational diabetes (GDM) is one of the most under-recognised challenges in maternity care today. Despite affecting around one in five pregnancies in the UK, GDM remains a blind spot in policy and practice, with devastating consequences for women and their children. New research continues to expose the [...]

North London NHS Foundation Trust has signed a new partnership with leading digital health company Psyomics to revolutionise how people across Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Haringey, Islington access mental health care. The collaboration will see Psyomics’ digital technology rolled out across community services, enabling access to the right support more easily for over 1.6 million residents. [...]

High-risk women can now delay ovary removal surgery through NHS screening, helping them preserve fertility and avoid early surgical menopause. The ROCA test tracks women with BRCA gene mutations every four months, monitoring cancer risk markers instead of requiring immediate preventive surgery. University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has begun rolling out the programme, [...]