Meet the innovator: Grace Gimson, Holly Health

Grace Gimson is the founder and CEO of Holly Health, a digital platform dedicated to transforming healthcare through preventive and person-centered digital health coaching. The platform aims to support individuals struggling with mental or physical health.

Grace is a generalist with a background in operations, business leadership, and scaling tech startups such as Deliveroo. From a young age, she aspired to address human health challenges using technology. Beyond her professional endeavours, she is a trained personal trainer and health coach. Approximately five years ago, she had the opportunity to pursue her intended path by establishing Holly Health alongside a team of psychology and software experts. To date, Holly Health has supported over 50,000 individuals in making positive health behaviour changes.

Tell us about the innovation. The what and the why?

The platform offers personalised and compassionate coaching, motivational nudges, and education and outcomes tracking in key areas such as exercise, sleep, eating, and mental well-being. It takes into account medical conditions, current habits and individual goals to tailor the tech-driven coaching.

After 200+ NHS partnerships, it’s proving especially impactful for people living with multiple long term conditions, and for those who suffer from anxiety or depression symptoms alongside physical health challenges.

Average outcomes include:

• 40 mins increase in weekly exercise
• 31% improvement in mental wellbeing (including anxiety symptoms)
• 19% increase in energy levels
• Decreased need for doctor appointments
• Blood pressure, weight and HbA1c reductions

I built Holly Health because of the sheer volume of people who are on their own, dealing with day-to-day health challenges related to; chronic conditions, the overwhelming pace of life, and worsening lifestyle factors like sleep, exercise and nutrition. Knowing ‘what’ needs doing is not the hard part, implementing the appropriate habit changes consistently is, and that’s where we believed well designed technology had a huge opportunity. I also believed that now is the time for the NHS to take notice and implement large scale preventive measures.

Which Health Innovation Networks have you been supported by?

Holly Health has been supported by the NHS Innovation Accelerator, where I was awarded a 3 year fellowship for my work as the founder and CEO of the company. Recently this helped to result in Holly Health’s inclusion as a case study in the NHS England Roland Sinker Review.

We’ve also had excellent support from Health Innovation East Midlands – through positioning us on pitch events with clinical leaders, as well as a funded external evaluation looking at how GP appointments change in relation to the use of Holly Health.

In the wider network, we’ve benefited from ad-hoc support from Wessex HIN, South London HIN, North West Coast HIN, HIN East and others.

What’s been the toughest obstacle to date?

Navigating a challenging funding climate since 2022 in UK and European health tech. And an even more challenging funding climate for female founded companies – under 2% of VC (Venture Capital) funds currently go to fully female founding teams.

Luckily these challenges have made us stronger and we’ve learnt how to navigate growth and development without the need for VC backing, through the support of excellent angel investors, grant funding (Innovate UK and SBRI) and commercial revenue.

What’s the best part of your job?

Constantly learning, leading the way in tech-driven behavioural health, behavioural science & psychological medicine, while seeing the impact the service has on individuals every day around the UK.

Feedback comments like this:

“I am using Holly and I’m grateful to have a friend that can help me build a better relationship with myself and grow in confidence while doing so.”

“Holly Health has been a huge support for me, not only from my health offering tremendous support ideas and targets, but also I recently became a widower and at times very sad. Through this app is offers not only health but company, a reason to keep motivated such a great app, thank you”

“Holly Bird has helped me to exercise daily in 10 minute bursts enabling me to feel better in myself. The daily routine or the occasional use has been priceless, the simplicity made it easy to use, and the back to basics challenges has been a bedrock towards my recovery”

We also have a great team that is very supportive of each other and helps to create and maintain a sustainable working environment.

What are your hopes for the future?

Looking ahead, I envision a future where preventive health approaches are integrated from the earliest stages of life. And where both young and old can access tailored tech-enabled coaching appropriate to them, funded by their healthcare providers.

I hope that NHS leaders will soon recognise that this will be one of the crucial ways to increase system sustainability and reduce longer term healthcare costs.

What are your three pieces of advice for budding innovators?

1. Believe in Yourself: Recognise that everyone is navigating their journey as they go. Your unique insights and experiences set you apart; trust in them.
2. Prioritise Your Well-being: The journey of company building is demanding. Ensure you take care of your physical and mental health by setting boundaries to avoid burnout.
3. Prioritise Revenue over Investment: Venture capital funding is often not the right route to take in healthcare or health technology (which usually needs a slower growth path and less of an explosive growth curve). Line up commercial opportunities and grant funding as close to the beginning as possible.