Dr Ruth Plackett is a Senior Research Fellow in Digital Health at King’s College London. She is also a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at University College London (UCL) in the Department of Primary Care and Population Health.

Ruth’s research focuses on the development and evaluation of digital health interventions and mixed methods research. She has a strong interest in how social media and digital technologies can be harnessed to support mental health and wellbeing, and how concerns about their impact are managed in healthcare settings. She has been awarded several competitive fellowships, including the NIHR Three Schools’ Mental Health Research Fellowship and the NIHR School for Public Health Research Postdoctoral Launching Fellowship, to explore the relationship between social media use and mental health in young people.

Ruth also completed the NIHR and Zinc Innovation Fellowship, where she collaborated with digital mental health startups to support research, evaluation, and human-centred design. Her recent work at UCL involved managing the dissemination phase of the PD-Care trial, a digital self-management tool for people with Parkinson’s disease. Ruth has also held research roles in the voluntary sector at the Anna Freud Centre and Young Lives vs Cancer, and has undertaken a Researcher in Residence Policy Fellowship with the Greater London Authority, exploring environmental influences on youth health and mental health.

At King’s, Ruth works with the Digital Health team to contribute to research on health apps and their role in improving population health outcomes. Her work supports efforts to enhance the impact of digital services such as the NHS App and MyChart, and to explore strategies for their integration into NHS infrastructure. She collaborates across King’s Health Partners and the King’s Population Health Institute, engaging with interdisciplinary teams and NHS stakeholders to shape the future of digital healthcare in the UK.

Ruth also has a strong interest in teaching and has co-led undergraduate and postgraduate modules on digital health and behavioural science, with a focus on applying mixed methods research to real-world digital health challenges.