Reducing health inequalities is more than a moral imperative. It’s a strategic investment for healthcare providers looking to deliver better outcomes, greater efficiency and safer care.
NHS England’s recent Patient Safety Healthcare Inequalities Reduction Framework, published in May 2025, is a vital step towards making NHS care safer and fairer for all. It sets out how organisations can deliver equitable access, improve the patient experience, and achieve optimal outcomes.
The framework sets out five priorities for NHS organisations which can be used to embed equity into everyday practice. It gives practical tools to frontline teams and integrated care boards on how to provide care that improves clinical outcomes, especially for those groups most affected by health inequalities.
Communication is the first priority, and it was an honour to see CardMedic referenced in the framework as a digital communication tool that can help tackle inequalities. As the framework notes, CardMedic is designed to help healthcare professionals communicate clearly with patients facing language, cognitive, visual, or hearing barriers.
Such barriers are common. There are an estimated one million people in the UK who speak little or no English. For them, the NHS vision of ‘equitable care for all’ is often out of reach due to inconsistent communication across the system.
The costs of poor communication
Communication is fundamental to safe and effective care. When patients and clinicians can’t communicate clearly, the risk of harm increases at every stage of the healthcare journey, worsening health inequalities.
As the NHS Race and Health Observatory warns: ‘A health system that fails to serve its population in a timely and equitable way will always lead to waste.’ Sadly, there are many examples:
- Language barriers delay diagnosis, leading to more severe illness and higher costs.
- Missed appointments and avoidable A&E visits often stem from a lack of understanding caused by communication barriers.
- Litigation risks increase when patients don’t fully understand their care. NHS medical negligence liabilities rose to £58.2 billion in 2024, with a significant share linked to maternity incidents.
Disadvantaged groups bear the brunt of these failures. Black and Asian women, for example, face maternal mortality rates nearly three and two times higher, respectively, than white women. Miscommunication is recognised as a crucial factor in poor maternal outcomes by organisations such as MBRRACE.
Structural barriers to good communication
Language barriers are only part of the story. Many patients struggle with written or spoken health information.
Over 40% of UK adults have low health literacy, rising to over 60% when numbers and statistics are involved. These challenges are even greater for people from disadvantaged backgrounds, and they often lead to less informed decision-making, disengagement, and worse outcomes.
The Accessible Information Standard (AIS) is a legal requirement that ensures NHS and publicly funded adult social care providers give information in formats people can understand, either through simplified language, British Sign Language (BSL), or other support.
Promoting the AIS is more than a compliance issue; it’s a patient safety issue. People may not understand clinical instructions, such as for medication. Written Medicine, founded by NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Fellow, Ghalib Khan, is doing some fantastic work in this space. Poor adherence can risk poor outcomes, distressing experiences and expensive litigation.
Despite legal duties under the Equality Act 2010 and the NHS Act 2006, communication support remains uneven across the NHS. According to the South, Central and West Commissioning Support Unit (SCW CSU), the NHS spends around £75.5 million annually on NHS interpreting and translation services. SWCSU estimates the actual need may be £250–£300 million.
Trusts serving diverse populations carry a disproportionate burden, and inconsistent provision increases pressure on frontline staff, delays care and reinforces existing inequalities.
How CardMedic helps overcome communication barriers
This is where CardMedic can help. CardMedic offers a simple, scalable solution to bridge communication gaps, with language and communication tools that boost NHS interpreting services and address health inequalities.
CardMedic features a library of pre-written scripts covering common clinical scenarios and is available in multiple languages and accessible formats such as Easy Read, sign language videos and Read Aloud. It can be deployed instantly at the bedside, supporting urgent and routine interactions.
As North East London Health and Care Partnership is discovering, CardMedic complements existing provision, with immediate support if interpreters are unavailable. Its clinically reviewed content can be used without the doubts that come with online tools and the risks around using family members for translation.
CardMedic has just secured SBRI and Innovate UK funding to integrate live interpreters into the platform, a hugely exciting offering that is just launching in hospitals across the UK. Providers can integrate their existing language service providers into the platform, ensuring staff can access interpreters from within their pocket, increasing equitable access.
Along with aligning with NHS England priorities, CardMedic directly supports the AIS, saves time and effort for frontline staff, and ensures that inclusive communication can more easily become standard practice.
CardMedic helps patients and staff overcome a wide range of barriers – from hearing, vision, and cognitive impairments to limited English proficiency or PPE-related obstructions. Staff have the support to put equity, safety, and compassion into every clinical interaction with every individual they treat.
With CardMedic in place, healthcare organisations have a tool that can reduce costs and inequalities and enhance access, experiences and outcomes.
NHS England published the Patient Safety Healthcare Inequalities Reduction Framework on 15 May 2025.
CardMedic will strengthen its existing solution to create a seamless, AI-enhanced end-to-end language service provision system which enables immediate access to healthcare content. This will include on-demand personalised interpreter services from trusted translation and interpretation providers.
Tim Grimaldi, Co-founder and Managing Director of CardMedic said; “This funding enables us to realise our long-term vision of making healthcare communication even more accessible and efficient. At a time when the NHS is focused on driving productivity and improving patient care, our solution offers innovative ways to deliver high quality language services quickly, efficiently and where they were previously unavailable. We’re creating an innovative solution that will further transform how language services are delivered across the NHS. This will not only improve accessibility but also create a more efficient and cost-effective system that benefits patients, healthcare providers and language service providers alike”
The project will develop two key components. Firstly, enhancements to the existing CardMedic Frontline app will deliver improved speed and accessibility features including adjustable content sizes for people with visual impairments, streamlined language navigation for people with English as a second or third language, enhanced performance for NHS integration, offline, device agnostic use and optimised landscape viewing enabling patients to better understand diagnostics and treatment. This builds on CardMedic’s extensive library of clinically validated content, which already serves thousands of healthcare professionals across the NHS and increasingly in the US.
CardMedic Connect will be the company’s new portal which will empower healthcare providers to serve patients more effectively. By offering seamless access to diverse language service providers tailored to specific needs, patients will benefit from clearer information and the ability to make more informed choices about their care. The integration of AI technology will enhance CardMedic’s expert-validated medical communication database, creating a comprehensive and specialised resource. This ensures accurate and consistent communication and facilitates access to interpreters who not only understand the language but also the crucial cultural context and norms, enabling healthcare providers to seamlessly access different language service providers and leading to a more patient-centred and equitable healthcare experience.
CardMedic is well positioned to deploy this new functionality through its existing customer base, which includes healthcare organisations across the UK and USA. They will be among the first healthcare providers to implement these enhanced capabilities, leveraging the new AI-powered features and language service innovations to address their communication challenges and drive further access and operational efficiencies. The company’s established presence in healthcare settings enables rapid deployment and validation of the new system in real-world clinical environments. This innovation aims to address the global healthcare language services market, valued at £8.1 billion.
Learn more about our journey and the impact we’re making here.
