For GP Practices & PCNs
AI scribes, online access and better workflows can improve efficiency in general practice. Health-Shared helps practices and PCNs build the missing layer: a patient community that supports confidence, self-management and action between appointments.
Designed for GP practices, PCNs and personalised care teams. Works alongside your existing outreach, patient communications and social prescribing pathways.
This short video explains the Health-Shared model: how communities of practice, AI-supported discovery and peer learning can help activation grow without creating more work for clinicians.
From lived experience to shared learning, prompts and participation — without adding another disconnected system into practice life.
General practice is under pressure to improve access, reduce admin burden and make better use of clinical time. New technologies can help with documentation, scheduling and decision support.
But most of a patient’s health happens outside the consultation.
If patients leave a consultation without support, reinforcement or shared learning, demand often comes back to the practice unchanged.
Health-Shared is built for that gap.
The gap in the system
A faster note does not automatically create confidence.
A better booking journey does not automatically create motivation.
A reminder does not automatically create sustained self-management.
Most of a patient’s health happens between appointments, not during them.
Health-Shared helps practices create structured patient communities where people learn from each other over time, share what actually works, and build momentum between appointments.
Instead of relying only on one-to-one clinical contact, you create a community environment where patients can contribute lived experience, practical strategies, questions, setbacks and successes.
Surface real patient themes, barriers and opportunities through structured conversations — at scale.
Structured pathways make participation easier for patients from the very first interaction.
Patients share what actually works, building a library of lived experience that grows over time.
Encourages consistent engagement without gamification noise or clinical distraction.
Practices gain visibility into recurring barriers, enabling more targeted prevention and follow-through.
This is not social media noise. It is a more structured, practice-linked way to support patient activation — informed by published work on communities of practice in healthcare and patient engagement in service redesign.
Want the broader product view? See how Health-Shared works as community infrastructure.
Already being implemented in primary care
Health-Shared is already being set up through the Pathfinder GP Healthy Aging Community, showing how practices can create a focused patient activation model around a defined cohort rather than attempting a whole-practice rollout from day one.
This makes it easier to start with a real use case, learn what works, and build a stronger engagement pathway over time.
“Health-Shared gives us a practical way to support patient activation between appointments, starting with a cohort where community support really matters.”
Health-Shared is offering a free pilot for selected GP practices and PCNs. That makes it easier to explore a practical model for patient activation without adding a new commercial barrier at the start.
Where local funding or internal support is relevant, it is not intended to pay Health-Shared for the pilot. Instead, it can support the practice or PCN’s own internal delivery needs — such as staff time, patient outreach, community facilitation, evaluation activity, and embedding the model into existing care pathways.
A low-friction way to test the model in one patient cohort, without a new commercial barrier at the start.
Any local funding supports your own delivery capacity — staff time, outreach, facilitation — not payment for the pilot itself.
Start with one cohort and build the case internally with partners, practice managers or PCN colleagues.
Optional research pathway
Practices interested in a research-active route can also explore participation through an Imperial College London PhD project led by Dr Florence Kashora.
Subject to final approved wording, National Reach Ethics Committee approval and PIC site approval are in place to add GP sites into the project, creating a more formal pathway for evaluation and participation.
Participation may support reflective learning, quality improvement activity and research-active practice development.
Practices contributing meaningfully to delivery, evaluation or dissemination may have opportunities to contribute to presentations, abstracts or publications, subject to the project’s publication policy and standard authorship criteria.
Health-Shared’s model for patient activation and community-led support is gaining support from leaders in primary care, public health and healthcare delivery.
Prof Azeem Majeed
Professor of Primary Care and Public Health
“Health-Shared empowers individuals with the tools for sustainable self-care while providing verifiable insights for funders and policymakers. In an era of rising chronic disease burdens, it represents a scalable, equitable model to foster genuine behavioural change and reduce healthcare inequities and had the potential to promote public health globally.”
Public health support including leaders connected to PHAST.
Including leaders connected to WeLReN and West London primary care research.
Health-Shared is grounded in published work on communities of practice, patient engagement, community engagement and digital self-management support. For practices that want to explore the underlying evidence, we have highlighted a small number of relevant papers below.
Healthcare professionals viewed the Health-Shared.com vCoP platform as usable and acceptable, with strong perceived potential to support patient activation, self-management, the patient journey and the consent process.
Kashora et al. — Investigating usability and acceptability of a virtual community of practiceCoPs are promoted in healthcare for generating and sharing knowledge and improving organisational performance. Later healthcare CoPs increasingly focused on improving clinical practice and implementing evidence-based practice.
Ranmuthugala et al. — How and why are communities of practice established in the healthcare sector?21 of 24 included studies positively affected health behaviours, public-health planning, service access, health literacy and a range of health outcomes, particularly where there was real power-sharing, collaborative partnership, and community voice in the protocol.
Cyril et al. — Exploring the role of community engagement in improving the health of disadvantaged populationsSolid evidence that community engagement interventions positively affect health behaviours, health consequences, self-efficacy and perceived social support outcomes across contexts, while also identifying design, process and resource factors that matter in implementation.
O'Mara-Eves et al. — Community engagement to reduce inequalities in healthPatient engagement can inform educational tools and planning documents, but also enhance care processes, service delivery and governance. Stronger redesign outcomes are more often associated with higher-level co-design or partnership rather than low-level consultation alone.
Bombard et al. — Engaging patients to improve quality of careIdentifies factors that improve engagement with web-based patient health information and proposes a practical framework for more engaging digital content.
Oktay et al. — Factors Affecting Engagement in Web-Based Health Care Patient InformationWe can share a fuller reading list, including pilot, research and evaluation material, during the demo or in the GP Partner Pack.
Start with a practical population where activation matters: healthy ageing, diabetes, hypertension, obesity, menopause, MSK, carers, loneliness, or another priority group.
Begin with a manageable patient cohort rather than your whole list.
Health-Shared captures what patients are actually experiencing, where they get stuck, what support they value, and what they wish they had known earlier.
Those themes become onboarding, prompts, shared learning and structured community activity.
Patients get practical support between appointments. Practices gain clearer insight into recurring barriers and opportunities for prevention, engagement and follow-through.
Health-Shared does not ask you to replace your EHR, booking system, portal or patient messaging tools. It sits around them.
That means your practice can continue using the technologies you already rely on, while adding a structured community model that supports what those systems do not easily deliver on their own: motivation, confidence, shared experience and belonging.
Supports across
A better bridge between consultation advice and real-world patient follow-through.
A scalable engagement model that does not rely on constant manual chasing.
A practical way to complement social prescribing and personalised care with a structured community layer.
More confidence, more peer support, more practical learning, and more connection between appointments.
For GP practices and PCNs, trust is not optional. Health-Shared is designed to support secure implementation in healthcare environments.
GDPR compliant
Designed to meet General Data Protection Regulation requirements for patient data handling.
ISO 27001 compliant
Information security management aligned to the ISO 27001 standard.
This gives practices confidence that patient activation and community engagement can be supported in a way that aligns with appropriate information governance expectations.
Want to review our compliance approach? Ask for our information governance summary during your demo.
No. Health-Shared is a community activation layer that can sit alongside the systems and communication channels you already use. It is not a standalone app that competes with your existing patient-facing tools.
No. Health-Shared is designed to complement existing systems, not replace them. Your practice continues using the technologies you already rely on, while Health-Shared adds a structured community model that supports what those systems do not easily deliver: motivation, confidence, shared experience and belonging.
Yes. Health-Shared is designed to begin with a focused cohort, such as healthy ageing, long-term conditions, or another priority population. Starting with one cohort makes it easier to test the model, learn what works, and build a stronger case before expanding.
Health-Shared is offering a free pilot for selected practices and PCNs. Where local funding support is relevant, this is intended for the practice or PCN's own internal implementation activity — such as staff time, patient outreach, community facilitation and evaluation — rather than payment for the pilot itself.
Practices interested in a research-active route can discuss participation through an Imperial College London PhD project led by Dr Florence Kashora, subject to final approved wording on ethics and site approvals.
Health-Shared can be presented as GDPR compliant and ISO 27001 compliant for information security, subject to final internal approval of those claims. We can provide an information governance summary during your demo.
See how Health-Shared can support patient activation, healthy ageing and community-based engagement in your practice or PCN.
What to expect
Prefer to email directly? info@health-shared.com
Download the GP Partner PackPrimary care is already changing. The next step is not just better workflow. It is better activation. Health-Shared helps practices create patient communities that support confidence, self-management and practical follow-through between appointments.
Exploring Health-Shared for another audience?
