Measuring Health Outcomes: The Rising Value of Digital Patient Platforms

Data, and the use of data and AI to drive efficiencies and outcomes is prevalent across all sectors. For the healthcare market, faced with rising costs against a demographic backdrop of an aging population and declining birth rates, both in the UK and across the developed world, it represents an opportunity to make the maths work.

Efficiency gains are increasingly linked to value, defined by outcomes — the real-world results that patients experience. This shift towards value-based care is creating a surge in demand for digital platforms that can capture, analyse, and present patient-reported outcomes at scale and feedback results into improved identification and resolution of future problems.

The Technology Driving Change

Cloud-based platforms, integrated with electronic medical records, are enabling clinicians to track thousands of patients at once, often across multiple sites. The combination of mobile accessibility, automated reminders, and data visualisation dashboards has transformed what used to be a manual, resource-intensive process. In terms of both administration and patient outcomes this, combined with AI as it accelerates enables compelling efficiency gains as the volume of evidenced improvement is made available across the market.

In parallel, hospitals can use outcome data to differentiate their services, negotiate with commissioners, and demonstrate compliance with national reporting requirements. For private providers, strong outcome data can enhance brand reputation and patient trust.

Why the Market Is Growing — and Why Now

NHS wait times are at record highs, with over 7.4 million people waiting for hospital treatment in England as of mid-2025. Delays are driving hospitals and commissioners to seek remote monitoring tools to keep patients engaged, track deterioration, and prepare patients ahead of surgery (“prehabilitation”). Platforms that can bridge the gap between diagnosis and treatment are becoming operational necessities, not optional extras.

With digital transformation placed at the centre of the NHS 10-year health plan, this creates significant opportunity for outcome platforms that align with national priorities.

Governments, insurers, and hospital networks are aligning payment and procurement decisions with measurable results. The NHS’s focus on efficiency and patient experience is accelerating adoption of technology that can monitor patients remotely, track recovery, and flag risks early. Globally, this trend is reinforced by organisations such as ICHOM, which promote standardised outcome measurement.

For providers, the benefits are clear:

• Better decision-making with real-time patient data.
• Reduced waste through early intervention and targeted care.
• Improved patient engagement and satisfaction.

Investor Appetite and Market Momentum

The digital health sector — particularly accessing electronic records, outcome measurement and remote monitoring — is attracting sustained interest from investors and acquirers. Factors driving this include:

• Long-term demand drivers from aging population and the cost implications of ever extending treatment options in pharmaceutical and surgical fields
• Subscription-based, recurring revenue models make valuation dynamics attractive to private equity and strategic acquirers.
• Sticky integrations into EMRs and clinical workflows — once embedded, migration is costly and complex.
• Regulatory and accreditation momentum, from ICHOM to NHS mandates, is making outcome measurement a procurement imperative.
• Hybrid value drivers: technology meets clinical efficacy—platforms deliver both cost savings and clinical differentiation.

Deals in the sector are being driven by both strategic buyers (healthcare groups seeking in-house capability) and financial sponsors (private equity funds building digital health portfolios).

• Accel-KKR invests in CareLineLive (April 2025): CareLineLive provides an all-in-one cloud-based platform for homecare agencies, integrating staff scheduling, client visits, patient records and invoicing. The investment would help accelerate the company’s growth and international reach. A portion of the funding will be used to establish a customer support presence in Australia, enabling round-the-clock service alongside the UK team.
• Sword Health acquires Surgery Hero (January 2025): Sword Health, a healthcare AI platform focused on pain and movement, acquired Surgery Hero—a UK-based digital prehabilitation specialist—strengthening its proposition in pre-surgical care. Post-acquisition, Sword expanded services across 18 NHS trusts, combining digital prehab solutions with their AI-driven model.
• uMotif acquires ClinOne (September 2024): In a strategic move, uMotif, offering eCOA/ePRO systems, purchased ClinOne—adding consent management and digital trial technology to its suite. The combined offering targets both patient burden reduction and streamlined clinical trial workflows.
• CVC Capital Partners invests in Clevermed through its platform System C (February 2023): System C provides vertical software solutions for hospitals, social care, immunisation management and population health that help to improve the quality and efficiency of patient care. Clevermed is best known for its fully integrated patient clinical care records (spine services), reporting services, patient portal services, and its flagship product, BadgerNet, an end-to-end service supporting all aspects of electronic recording for women and children’s health. This acquisition will broaden System C’s product portfolio, enhancing the company’s maternity offering, and supporting its goal to deliver integrated digital solutions that span the entire patient journey from prenatal services to end of life care.
• G Square Health invests in Mayden (November 2023): Mayden specialises in designing, building and supporting insightful and interoperable systems and platforms and offers patient management, digital care record systems, patient and administration management and analytics services, thereby helping clients deliver data-driven, outcome-focused and patient-centred care. The investment will see Mayden further cement its commitment to continue to design, build and support insightful and interoperable systems for healthcare services in the UK and abroad.
• Livingbridge invests in Nourish Care Systems (March 2022): Nourish is a cloud-hosted Digital Care Planning Platform supporting care providers and carers in the evidencing and accessing of care records, enabling better care prevention using data insight and reporting. Livingbridge’s investment will enable Nourish to further develop its best-in-class platform, continue to innovate in the use of data to improve care outcomes and broaden the care settings Nourish can support to positively impact as many lives of those in care as possible.

Is this Your Time?

The combination of healthcare’s shift towards measurable outcomes and the scalability of digital platforms is creating significant strategic and financial value. For business owners in this space, now is the time to assess growth plans, explore partnerships, and consider future options.

For founders and shareholders in the sector, the next 3–5 years present an attractive window for growth and potential exit. As ever, technology and businesses that can:

1. Demonstrate measurable impact on patient outcomes for a given cost.
2. Maintain high client retention rates.
3. Build scalable, secure, and compliant platforms.

Whilst the opportunities are well recognised and long term in nature, we anticipate a rather shorter time horizon before new, AI driven models secure a degree of market leadership and possibly become the standard. As we have seen already, once traction is gained, investors are ready to provide extensive support. Smaller and mid-sized players should consider the scale of resources likely to be required to compete effectively.

If you would like to get an external perspective on your options and opportunities, whether for a transaction or not, Polestar would be delighted to have a conversation.