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THE SCALE OF THE CHALLENGE: 1.9 million workers experienced work-related ill health in Great Britain in 2024/25, with 40.1 million working days lost as a result.
1.9 million workers experienced work-related ill health in Great Britain in 2024/25. 964,000 reported work-related stress, depression or anxiety. 511,000 reported work-related musculoskeletal disorders. 40.1 million working days were lost to work-related ill health and workplace injuries. Stress, depression and anxiety alone accounted for 22.1 million days lost.
The numbers, at a glance:
Metric | Figure |
Workers with work-related ill health (2024/25) | 1.9m |
Reported stress, depression or anxiety | 964,000 |
Reported musculoskeletal disorders | 511,000 |
Total working days lost | 40.1m |
Days lost to stress, depression & anxiety alone | 22.1m |
These numbers put pressure on occupational health (OH) teams to manage assessments, referrals, appointments, clinical notes, recommendations and return-to-work (RTW) plans efficiently. At the same time, employees increasingly expect convenient digital access to appointments, health information and communications. This makes a connected employee health management system, supported by a patient portal and aligned with the wider NHS digital ecosystem, increasingly relevant to modern occupational health.
Occupational health sits at the intersection of clinical care, workforce wellbeing and workplace operations.
An OH team may deal with pre-employment assessments, health surveillance, sickness absence, workplace injuries, vaccinations, referrals, functional assessments, fitness-for-work reviews and RTW recommendations, often while coordinating with HR, managers, GPs and other healthcare professionals.
The challenge is not simply recording this information.
It is making sure the right information is available to the right professional at the right time, with appropriate access controls and a clear audit trail.
This is where a modern employee health management system can make a practical difference.
The NHS 10 Year Health Plan, published in July 2025, sets out three major shifts: hospital to community, analogue to digital, and sickness to prevention. It also places technology, connected information and digital access at the centre of future healthcare delivery.
For occupational health, these principles have a direct relevance.
Prevention starts before an employee reaches a point of prolonged absence. Digital records can support earlier identification of workplace health concerns, while connected systems can help OH professionals coordinate assessments, referrals and follow-up.
The NHS is also developing the Single Patient Record (SPR), with NHS England expecting people to start viewing their SPR information through the NHS App from 2028. The SPR is designed to connect information across care settings and support safer, faster and more coordinated care.
For OH services working within or alongside NHS organisations, this direction reinforces the need for systems that are interoperable, secure and built around connected records.
A typical OH journey can look like this:
Referral → Appointment → Assessment → Clinical Notes → Advice → Workplace Recommendations → RTW Plan → Review → Closure
When every stage is handled through separate spreadsheets, emails, paper forms or disconnected applications, teams can spend significant time chasing information.
Common day-to-day challenges include:
A modern employee health management system needs to address these operational realities rather than simply digitising a paper form.
Cellma is an EHR and healthcare management platform designed to bring clinical, administrative and operational information into a connected digital environment.
For occupational health, this means OH teams can manage key activities within one structured system—from appointments and assessments to referrals, clinical records, recommendations, reviews and RTW activity.
Instead of treating every interaction as a separate task, Cellma can support the employee journey as an ongoing record.
OH professionals need more than basic demographic information. They need access to relevant assessments, clinical notes, referral information, recommendations, previous consultations and follow-up activity.
Cellma provides structured electronic records that can help OH teams maintain a longitudinal view of the employee’s occupational health journey.
Occupational health involves different types of assessments depending on the employee, role and service.
Cellma can support structured clinical documentation for:
✓ Pre-employment assessments
✓ Fitness-for-work assessments
✓ Health surveillance
✓ Workplace health assessments
✓ Functional assessments
✓ Management referrals
✓ Clinical reviews
✓ Return-to-work assessments
This gives clinicians a consistent digital environment for capturing relevant information.
A referral may come from HR, a line manager, another healthcare professional or an internal OH pathway.
With Cellma, referrals can become part of the employee’s digital clinical record rather than remaining as isolated emails or documents.
OH teams can track the case through assessment, recommendations, follow-up and closure. That creates a more structured employee health management system for day-to-day case management.
OH services manage high volumes of appointments across different clinics, professionals and locations.
Cellma’s appointment and scheduling capabilities can support:
✓ New assessments
✓ Follow-up appointments
✓ Reviews
✓ Referrals
✓ Remote consultations
✓ Clinic scheduling
✓ Appointment reminders
✓ Waiting-list management
This helps teams maintain visibility of what is booked, what is outstanding and what requires follow-up.
The employee does not have to be left out of the digital journey.
A patient portal can provide a secure route for employees to interact with the service, depending on the configured workflow and organisational requirements.
Potential use cases include:
This supports the wider NHS direction towards digital access. The NHS App already enables users to manage services such as appointments, prescriptions and access to health information, while NHS England is developing the future SPR around secure patient access.
For an OH service operating within the NHS ecosystem, NHS App interoperability and connected digital pathways can therefore become an important part of the longer-term digital strategy.
An occupational health system cannot work in isolation.
The wider healthcare environment includes GP systems, EPRs, HR systems, referral pathways, laboratory services, imaging systems and national NHS services.
Cellma supports interoperability through technologies and standards including FHIR, REST/Open APIs, HL7 and DICOM, alongside NHS-facing connectivity such as PDS, CIS2 and MESH, where applicable to the implementation.
This approach is important because NHS England describes interoperability as a core requirement for systems that need to communicate accurately and securely, while its Single Patient Record programme explicitly identifies interoperability as a design principle.
For OH teams, the practical objective is straightforward:
Less re-keying. Less chasing. Better information flow.
Occupational health records contain highly sensitive health information.
A modern employee health management system therefore needs strong controls around confidentiality, access and accountability.
Cellma’s security approach can support requirements through capabilities and frameworks including:
✓ Role-based access control (RBAC)
✓ Multi-factor authentication (MFA)
✓ Audit trails
✓ Encryption
✓ Secure authentication
✓ Data protection controls
✓ UK GDPR and Data Protection Act considerations
✓ DPIA support
✓ Clinical safety processes
✓ ISO 27001-aligned information security
✓ Cyber Essentials Plus
✓ DSPT considerations for NHS environments
The NHS Data Security and Protection Toolkit is a key assurance mechanism for NHS organisations, covering areas such as cyber risk, protection against attacks and breaches, incident management and appropriate use and sharing of information.
Clinical safety is equally important. NHS England’s DCB0129 applies to manufacturers of health IT systems, while DCB0160 applies to organisations deploying and using health IT. These standards provide a framework for identifying, assessing and managing clinical risks associated with digital systems.
NHS DTAC also brings together expectations around clinical safety, data protection, technical security, interoperability, usability and accessibility.
For an OH service, these are not just compliance terms. They translate into practical controls around who can see a record, what they can do, what gets recorded and how access is tracked.
Occupational health teams also need visibility beyond individual cases.
Management teams may need to understand:
With structured digital data, an employee health management system can provide a stronger foundation for reporting and analytics.
This allows OH leaders to move from simply asking:
“How many cases are open?”
to asking:
“Where is demand increasing, which services are being used most, and where are follow-ups getting delayed?”
That distinction matters when OH teams are managing real workforce pressures.
Modernising occupational health is not about replacing every existing process with another application.
It is about connecting the processes that already matter.
Referral. Assessment. Appointment. Clinical record. Recommendation. RTW. Review. Reporting.
Cellma brings these functions into a broader EHR environment while supporting interoperability, digital access, security and clinical governance.
It also fits the wider direction of NHS digital transformation: from analogue to digital, from isolated information to connected records, and from reactive care towards prevention.
The workplace health conversation is no longer only about managing sickness absence.
It is also about prevention, early intervention, safe working, timely support and getting people back to work safely when they are ready.
With 1.9 million workers experiencing work-related ill health and 40.1 million working days lost in 2024/25, occupational health services have a clear operational need for reliable digital infrastructure.
A connected employee health management system can give OH teams the digital foundation to manage that journey more effectively, while keeping clinical information structured, secure and accessible to authorised users.
Cellma brings occupational health, clinical records, appointments, referrals, patient-facing digital access, interoperability and reporting into one connected healthcare ecosystem.
Ready to Modernise Your Occupational Health Service?
Discover how Cellma can support your OH team with connected EHR capabilities, digital patient engagement, interoperability, secure clinical records and structured workforce health management.
Talk to the Cellma team to explore an occupational health solution built around your service, your workflows and your digital strategy.
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An employee health management system can bring appointments, referrals, assessments, clinical records, recommendations, follow-ups and return-to-work activities into one connected digital environment. Cellma supports these functions while also providing interoperability, reporting and secure access controls.
Yes. Cellma supports interoperability through standards and technologies including FHIR, HL7, REST/Open APIs, DICOM, PDS, CIS2 and MESH, where applicable to the implementation. It can also support digital pathways involving patient portals and wider NHS services.
Cellma provides capabilities including role-based access control, MFA, audit trails and encryption, alongside support for NHS requirements and frameworks such as DSPT, DCB0129, DCB0160 and DTAC, depending on the implementation and organisational responsibilities.
