The Organisation for the Review of Care and Health Apps (ORCHA) project.

A new project will track which health apps teenagers with mental health problems actually download and use, then test whether those apps improve their care. The problem is straightforward: thousands of health apps exist, but most have never been rigorously tested. Clinicians and families have no reliable way to know which ones work. The NHS spends money on app recommendations without evidence that patients engage with them or benefit. This project, called ORCHA, tackles that gap head-on. The researchers will first work with young people and carers to select a shortlist of apps, then monitor which ones are downloaded through child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS). In the second phase, they will design a formal study to measure whether the apps on the ORCHA platform actually improve health outcomes. If successful, this could give the NHS a practical, evidence-based system for prescribing digital tools—replacing guesswork with data. It would not transform mental health care overnight, but it would create the infrastructure needed to treat apps like any other medical intervention: test them first, then recommend them with confidence.