5th September, 2026

Univa will share results from live UK projects on family outcomes, NHS costs and waiting times, alongside a demonstration of its connected apps and clinician dashboard.

Univa has been selected as one of five innovators to present at the Mental Health Innovation Showcase on 15 September 2026. The event is hosted by the Mental Health Innovation Network and Harley Street Health District at Hale House, London, UK.

Why it matters

Beat, the UK’s eating disorder charity, now estimates that 3.5 million people in the UK, around one in 20, are living with an eating disorder. Its latest figures show that eating disorders are more common than previously understood.

Getting treatment can take time. An international review of 29 studies involving 17,433 people found an average of nearly two years between the onset of an eating disorder and the start of treatment¹.

Behind those figures are distressed young people suffering severe impairment and their families navigating difficult days and mealtimes, often unsure of their next step. They need practical support they can use at home as early as possible. Clinical teams need to understand what is changing between appointments.

Univa brings those needs together, helping support begin sooner and keeping young people, parents and clinicians connected throughout the programme.

What Univa will present

Univa will share findings from live projects across the UK, showing how its care programmes improve family outcomes, reduce NHS costs and shorten the wait to start support.

At one organisation, Univa has helped reduce waiting times to start eating disorder support, including support for avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID), from four months to less than a week.

Attendees will then see the platform itself. Univa is the first care platform for eating disorders to connect young people, parents and clinicians through a patient app, a dedicated parent and carer app, and a clinician dashboard in a single programme of care. Its programmes support children, teenagers and young adults with restrictive eating, anorexia and ARFID, alongside their families.

The demonstration will follow a real care journey.

– For the young person, the patient app guides them through their own programme, built on established clinical evidence, day by day.

– For parents and carers, the parent app provides practical skills from evidence-based interventions to approach difficult mealtimes and conversations with greater confidence.

– For the clinical team, information from both apps feeds into the clinician dashboard, providing a current picture of progress between appointments. Clinicians can use these insights to inform care planning and focus support where it is needed most. The connected apps help young people and families put that care into practice each day, keeping momentum going between appointments with the aim of supporting earlier recovery.

Rich Andrews, CEO and co-founder of Univa, said:

“We built Univa because young people, parents and clinicians each need support at the earliest possible moment to avoid eating disorder behaviours becoming entrenched. For a family, that might mean knowing what to say at tonight’s meal. For a clinician, it means understanding what has changed since the last appointment.

“At the showcase, we’ll share results from our live UK projects: what’s improving for families, how soon care begins and the cost savings it can bring to the NHS. We want to help more families access support sooner, and give NHS teams clear evidence to guide their decisions.”

Sources:

1De Geus, Trott, Monteleone et al., Duration of untreated illness in eating disorders: systematic review and meta-regression, Journal of Eating Disorders (2026).

About Univa

Founded in 2024, Univa Health is transforming the care experience for people with eating disorders and their families. Driven by science and harnessing the power of technology and design, the Univa Care Platform combines real-time monitoring with interactive, evidence-based therapeutic tools to deliver earlier intervention, more personalised support, and sustained recovery. Its unique dual app programmes provide tailored pathways for both the individual and their carer, harnessing the power of the family as an active partner in recovery. Built as a platform of tools to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of both NHS and private healthcare systems, Univa empowers clinicians to deliver care that is proactive, scalable, and compassionate. Alongside its healthcare partnerships, Univa also provides a direct-to-consumer service supported by its own in-house clinical team, giving families immediate access to expert-led care when they need it most. www.univa.health

About the Mental Health Innovation Showcase

The Mental Health Innovation Showcase 2026 is hosted by Harley Street Health District and the Mental Health Innovation Network (MHIN) on 15 September 2026 at Hale House, 76 Portland Place, London W1B 1NT. The finalist innovators were selected on application scores and to represent a broad cross-section of mental health innovation across populations, care settings, business models and routes to scale. Read their announcement here: https://harleystreethealthdistrict.com/mental-health-innovators-selected-for-harley-street-showcase/

Media enquiries:

Univa: media@univa.health