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Centre for Digital Innovations in Health and Social Care (CDIHSC)

We are a multidisciplinary team of researchers working together to develop and commercialise new health and social care technologies, and evaluate their impact

Our level of in-house research expertise was recognised by Research England with a transformative £4.86 million grant from its Expanding Excellence in England Fund. This financial support will help us realise our potential and deliver meaningful impact on individuals and communities.

A medical student showing a tablet device to a patient

What we do

CDIHSC is a research centre that drives advancements in digital health technologies to address challenges in health and social care. The Centre focuses on understanding the challenges faced by health and care providers while developing digital solutions that prioritise end-user needs and experiences to ensure sustainable outcomes in the healthcare sector.

Our two flagship research programmes are:

  • Creating novel technologies to enhance decision-making and reduce the burden of electronic documentation. (DocuLess)
  • Developing and evaluating technologies that reduce the health and care system’s carbon footprint and improve patient care. (REDUCTIFY)
The CDIHSC logo featuring the text

Contact us

To contact the Centre for Digital Innovations in Health and Social Care please complete our enquiry form, and keep up to date with our news and events through our Bluesky and LinkedIn accounts.

Complete our enquiry form Follow us on Bluesky Follow us on LinkedIn

Current projects

National Pathology Imaging Co-operative (NPIC)

The National Pathology Imaging Co-operative (NPIC) is a collaborative project to deploy digital pathology to the NHS and use it to develop artificial intelligence to improve diagnosis, bringing together expertise from NHS, academic and industry partners.

CDIHSC is working with NPIC to conduct independent usability testing of a number of AI technologies. Usability testing will provide insight into ease of use and acceptability of these technologies from the pathologist's perspective.

Joii

Joii have developed the Joii Period Evaluation Application (Joii App), a mobile application that uses artificial intelligence to provide users with a measurement of blood volume in millilitres and clot sizes. Using the Joii app, individuals can track and monitor their menstrual flow to help them understand whether their heavy periods fall within the expected range or if they might require further medical attention. 

CDIHSC collaborated with Joii to support user testing of the app. This support included seeking ethical review, recruitment of test participants, data collection and lab work.  

EVEREST-HN Research Studies

EVEREST-HN is a research programme aimed at improving the diagnostic pathway for suspected head and neck cancer symptoms by speeding up diagnosis, improving the patient experience and optimising the use of healthcare resources. 

CDIHSC is supporting work package two of the research project, which involves the co-design of a digital symptom questionnaire, known as the SYNC (Symptom iNput Clinical) system. Our role has included the recruitment of an Experts by Experience group to contribute to the design of the patient-facing questionnaire, and to also work with clinicians to design the clinician facing report from their point of view to ensure that the system met the needs of end users on both sides of the referral pathway.  

In addition, CDIHSC worked closely with pathway staff to map, and propose a viable workflow for SYNC’s deployment in hospital settings, which has led to a peer-review paper with recommendations for best practice in integrating digital tools into referral pathway.

Computer Aided Risk Scoring (CARSs)

CARSs is designed to help doctors to identify patients who are most at risk, using automated scoring systems to give real time estimates of a patient's risk of death and sepsis during their stay in hospital.

Completed projects

Our consultancy and knowledge transfer

We regularly collaborate with health and care partners and with digital health companies, undertaking research to evaluate and inform the design of the technology.

How we can help 

  • Identify requirements for a new technology or technology-based service 
  • Co-design a new technology with service users 
  • Evaluate a new or existing technology, providing recommendations for improvement and/or for increasing uptake of the technology. Our evaluation expertise ranges from usability evaluation of prototype products to real-world evaluation. 

We use of a range of research methods to provide you with evidence-based recommendations.

What it costs

The cost of our consultancy packages are dependent on the needs of each organisation and so packages are costed on an individual basis. We can tailor our consultancy services to meet your financial requirements and budgets.

Doctoral Training

Through our doctoral students, we aim to create future leaders in digital health.

Our PhD projects focus on how technology can be used to improve the delivery of health and social care, and our advertised projects are typically developed in conjunction with our health and social care partners. We have recruited 5 PhD students for 2025, and plan to recruit further.

PhD students in the Centre have access to the Wolfson Centre for Applied Health Research, where they and the team work one day a week.

The Wolfson Centre is home of the NIHR Yorkshire & Humber Applied Research Collaboration, the NIHR Yorkshire & Humber Patient Safety Research Collaboration, and the Yorkshire Quality & Safety Research group, so provides a vibrant environment with a strong network of researchers and clinical colleagues.

Apply for the PhD (Faculty of Health Studies).

We have previously supported healthcare professionals to successfully apply for NIHR pre-doctoral and doctoral fellowships – if you are a health or care professional who is interested in pursuing this route, email CDIHSC@bradford.ac.uk.

Our team

Dr Joshua Pink

Dr Joshua Pink

Associate Professor in Health Economics

Dr Sarath Rathnayake

Dr Sarath Rathnayake

Senior Research Fellow in Health Informatics

Dr Jiada Tu, Senior Research Software Engineer, posing on a rooftop

Dr Jiada Tu

Senior Research Software Engineer

Dr Jodi Ventre

Research Fellow in Applied Health Research

Dr Jodi Ventre, CDIHSC
I joined the University of Bradford as a Research Fellow in Applied Health Research in January 2026. My undergraduate and master’s degrees, from Manchester Metropolitan University, were in Exercise and Sports Science, with a particular focus on exercise physiology. I later obtained my PhD in Psychology, also from Manchester Metropolitan University in 2022, which focused on primary fall prevention strategies, identifying fall risk factors in middle-aged adults.
Prior to joining the University of Bradford, I spent 4-years as a Research Associate in the Healthy Ageing Research Group at the University of Manchester.
I am currently a member of the falls and bone health special interest group for the British Geriatric Society and sit as a World Falls Guidelines concerns about falling working group member.
Research
I am a mixed-methods researcher, and my research background focuses entirely on preventing falls in adults from the age of 50+ and helping older adults to live longer, healthier lives. My work attempts to prevent falls before they occur and slow down the rate at which older adults fall, to be able to prevent the negative consequences of falling (e.g. injuries, concerns about falling).
I have been the lead researcher on a number of NIHR funded research projects that focused on increasing the availability of evidence-based fall prevention programmes, utilising implementation science frameworks. Further work includes improving equity of access to fall prevention interventions for older adults from underserved populations.
I have a specific interest in how adults develop concerns about falling and how these concerns take hold and alter behaviours, indirectly reducing both confidence and independence in later life.
My current research includes working on a NIHR Programme Development Grant to identified modifiable fall risk factors for in-patients, to be able to inform and design a clinical support tool to identify those at greatest risk of falls. 
Dr Jodi Ventre, CDIHSC

Research Fellow in Applied Health Research

Dr Hadiza Ismaila

Dr Hadiza Ismaila

Translational Research Fellow in Digital Health

Jennifer Rowland

Information Specialist

Jennifer Rowland
My BSc is Genetics and Zoology from the University of Leeds. After my Librarianship MA at Sheffield I worked at Imperial College London Library. I moved to the University of Bradford as a subject librarian, and later became a faculty librarian. In my library roles I have supported staff and students in engineering, computer science, medicine and optometry. I am an FHEA and mentor for the University’s Bradford Fellowships scheme.
In 2026 I left the library to become an Information Specialist in the Centre for Digital Innovations in Health and Social Care, supporting the Centre’s research with my search expertise.
Publications
Jennifer Rowland

Information Specialist

Andrew Key, Centre Coordinator in the Centre for Digital Innovations in Health and Social Care, smiling.

Andrew Key

Centre Coordinator

Maame Nantwi

Centre Administrator

Maame Nantwi, CDIHSC Centre administrator

I am the current Centre Administrator, with an MSc in Big Data Science and Technology from University of Bradford. I specialise in transforming complex datasets into clear, accessible visual insights that support decision making. I have research experience from a dissertation focused on resource allocation in UK hospitals, where I applied machine learning techniques to analyse patient influx patterns, hospital bed demand, and predictive trends to inform healthcare planning.

Contact

Email
cdihsc@bradford.ac.uk
Maame Nantwi, CDIHSC Centre administrator

Centre Administrator