Primary care activation
AI-assisted discovery interviews
Surface real patient themes, barriers and opportunities through structured conversations at scale.
For GP Practices & PCNs
Primary care is getting smarter. Patient activation still needs a scalable model.
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.
- Not a portal replacement
- Not another patient app
- A community-led activation layer for primary care
- Built for GP practices, PCNs and personalised care teams
- Supports social prescribing, prevention and long-term condition support
See how Health-Shared helps GP practices turn patient populations into authentic communities
This short video explains the Health-Shared model: how communities of practice, AI-supported discovery, and peer learning can help GP practices improve engagement and activation without creating more work for clinicians.
From lived experience to shared learning, ongoing engagement, and better follow-through — without adding another disconnected digital layer.
Digital tools can improve access and workflow. They do not automatically create activation.
GP practices and PCNs are investing in digital access, workflow tools, care coordination and virtual services. Those investments matter.
But most patients still live the reality of their condition outside the consultation.
What changes outcomes is what happens next.
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 gives your practice a scalable activation layer
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.
Primary care activation
Guided prompts and onboarding
Structured pathways make participation easier for patients from the very first interaction.
Primary care activation
Peer-led learning and community contribution
Patients share what actually works, building a library of lived experience that grows over time.
Primary care activation
Light incentives and recognition
Encourages consistent engagement without gamification noise or clinical distraction.
Primary care activation
Clearer insight between appointments
Practices gain visibility into recurring barriers, enabling more targeted prevention and follow-through.
Community-led activation is evidence-led.
Health-Shared evidence
Virtual communities of practice and patient self-management
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 practiceSystematic reviewCommunities of practice in healthcare: what they are and why they matter
CoPs 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?Systematic reviewCommunity engagement and better health outcomes
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 populationsSystematic reviewCommunity engagement and health inequalities
Solid 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 healthSystematic reviewPatient engagement and quality of care
Patient 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 careDigital engagementDigital content and engagement
Identifies 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 InformationThis is not social media noise. It is a more structured, practice-linked way to support patient activation and turn lived experience into useful learning for people managing their health.
Want the broader product view? See how Health-Shared works as community infrastructure.
Already being implemented in primary care
Pathfinder GP Healthy Aging Community
Pathfinder GP / NHS proof point
A focused cohort model for starting small, learning quickly, and building patient activation around a real primary-care priority.
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.”
Start with a free pilot your practice can take forward internally
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.
Free pilot
A low-friction way to test the model in one patient cohort, without a new commercial barrier at the start.
Internal use
Any local funding supports your own delivery capacity — staff time, outreach, facilitation — not payment for the pilot itself.
Pilot-friendly
Start with one cohort and build the case internally with partners, practice managers or PCN colleagues.
Optional research pathway
Research pathway available through Imperial College London
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 Research 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.
- Research-active participation
- Evaluation and reflective learning
- Contributing to wider evidence generation
- Community-based patient activation research
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.
Supported by leaders across primary care, public health and healthcare delivery
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 has the potential to promote public health globally.”
Public health support
Supported by PHAST
Public health support including leaders connected to PHAST.
Primary care innovation
Supported by primary care innovation networks
Including leaders connected to WeLReN and West London primary care research.
Research and evidence underpinning the model
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.
Health-Shared evidence
Virtual communities of practice and patient self-management
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 practiceSystematic reviewCommunities of practice in healthcare: what they are and why they matter
CoPs 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?Systematic reviewCommunity engagement and better health outcomes
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 populationsSystematic reviewCommunity engagement and health inequalities
Solid 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 healthSystematic reviewPatient engagement and quality of care
Patient 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 careDigital engagementDigital content and engagement
Identifies 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.
How a Health-Shared pilot starts
Choose one cohort
Start with a practical population where activation matters: healthy ageing, diabetes, hypertension, obesity, menopause, MSK, carers, loneliness, or another priority group.
Invite a core group first
Begin with a manageable patient cohort rather than your whole list.
Run AI-supported discovery
Health-Shared captures what patients are actually experiencing, where they get stuck, what support they value, and what they wish they had known earlier.
Turn insight into community participation
Those themes become onboarding, prompts, shared learning and structured community activity.
Grow activation over time
Patients get practical support between appointments. Practices gain clearer insight into recurring barriers and opportunities for prevention, engagement and follow-through.
Built to complement, not replace, your existing systems
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:
- Personalised care
- Prevention
- Social prescribing
- Long-term condition support
- Healthy ageing
- Community-based care
- Better support between appointments
What this means for your team
For GPs
A better bridge between consultation advice and real-world patient follow-through.
For practice managers
A scalable engagement model that does not rely on constant manual chasing.
For PCNs
A practical way to complement social prescribing and personalised care with a structured community layer.
For patients
More confidence, more peer support, more practical learning, and more connection between appointments.
Information governance
Built with information security and trust in mind
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.
Frequently asked questions
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.
Build the missing activation layer in your practice
Primary 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.
Book a GP Demo
See how Health-Shared can support patient activation, healthy ageing and community-based engagement in your practice or PCN.
What to expect
- 30-minute walkthrough tailored to your practice or PCN
- Discussion of your specific patient population and priorities
- Pilot options and how to get started with one cohort
- Information governance and compliance overview
Prefer to email directly? info@health-shared.com
Download the GP Partner Pack