Founded by Dr Danny Glover and Dr Steven Whatmough, health-tech start up ORB has been recognised for building technology that improves access to health information and supports safer, more connected care.
Date: 14 April 2026
ORB has been named a North West regional finalist in the UK StartUp Awards 2026 in the Technology StartUp of the Year category. Founded in 2022 by Dr Danny Glover and Dr Steven Whatmough, the business has developed a health technology platform that helps bring fragmented health information together, enabling clinicians to access and use information more effectively.
The UK StartUp Awards was launched to recognise startup organisation across the UK. Over 2,000 businesses applied for this year’s UK StartUp Awards across ten nations and regions. The contribution of these firms, all of which started trading in the last three years, is significant, having created nearly 5,000 new jobs since they were established and generating annual sales of over £150 million.
ORB is a health technology platform designed to bring fragmented health information together in one place. By providing private clinicians with faster, safer access to essential data, including secure, consent-led access to NHS GP records, the platform ensures that clinics and practitioners can make better-informed decisions while patients remain in control of their own data. The founders established the business after experiencing the frustrations first-hand – while working in professional sport, they found themselves spending excessive time chasing records and coordinating incomplete medical histories. They subsequently identifyied a widespread problem across the private healthcare sector that needed an innovative digital solution.
“Being shortlisted is a real achievement for us and a proud moment for the whole team,” said Dr Danny Glover, CEO and Co-Founder of ORB. “We started ORB because we had lived the frustration of fragmented health information first-hand, and we believed there had to be a better way. To be recognised by the UK StartUp Awards is real validation of the problem we are solving, the progress we have made and the opportunity ahead.”
The company has seen significant momentum, most notably securing an agreement with NHS England, enabling patients to share their complete GP records with private clinicians. This partnership underpins ORB Connect and provides the business with a unique position in enabling secure, consent-led access to GP records for private and non-CQC registered health organisations. This milestone has driven substantial growth, with ORB now supporting 71 organisations and over 21,000 patients on the platform.
Professor Dylan Jones-Evans OBE, co-founder of the UK StartUp Awards, said ‘This year’s finalists represent the very best of British entrepreneurial talent, spotting opportunities and, through dedication, skill, and resilience, building ventures that are making a real difference in their industries and communities. The standard of entries in 2026 has been exceptional, and every finalist should be enormously proud of what they have achieved. Regional winners will go on to represent their region at the national final at Ideas Fest in September, and that is a stage worthy of everything they have built.’
About ORB:
Founded by Dr Danny Glover and Dr Steven Whatmough, ORB was born from a shared frustration that health information is locked in silos across the NHS, private healthcare and sports medicine.
As practising clinicians in elite sports, emergency medicine and general practice, they experienced first hand the impact of fragmented health information on time and quality of care.
This drove the desire to design and build a platform that provides access to all aspects of patient care – a platform that connects information from multiple sources and makes it accessible to patients, health care professionals and medical systems.
About the UK StartUp Awards
The UK StartUp Awards, founded by Frankie James and Professor Dylan Jones-Evans as part of Ideas Community, is the UK’s largest independent startup awards programme. This year’s regional UK StartUp Awards finalists can be found online at https://startupawards.uk/. Winners of the regional finals are entered into the national finals, with awards
ENDS
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