Health-Shared.com is an online community for people searching for information about healthcare. At the core of the community are patients sharing their experiences and healthcare professionals sharing their expertise.

There is no ‘closed’ members only area on Health-Shared.com, but registering as a member brings some benefits. These include personalised content and recommendations based on your interests, age, location and gender. Also, as a registered member, you can create and share your own content.

Registration is fast and easy. You can register anonymously as a member in ‘one click‘, and get all the benefits of membership, without sharing your name.

There are three types of users:

1. Anonymous members
2. Members
3. Healthcare professionals

Different membership types have their own roles.

We support:

• Stories — Short videos, typically a couple of minutes long, made by healthcare professionals to explain conditions or treatment, or by patients to describe their experiences of healthcare.
• Topics — These are structured, evidence based healthcare articles.
• Questions — Asked by people and answered by healthcare professionals.
• Playlists — These are collections of healthcare topics and stories, curated by healthcare providers or patients.

1. Click on the ‘Create’ button, from the side menu;
2. Choose the type of content you would like to add;
3. Fill out the form for Playlists, Questions and Communities, or complete the Wizard for Topics and Stories;
4. Do not forget to ‘Publish’ your content by clicking the button at the end.

Stories are short (1–2 minutes long) videos, recorded by healthcare professionals to explain conditions or treatment, or made by patients to describe their experiences of healthcare or a condition.

1. Film a video on an experience you have had or expert opinion on treatment;
2. Click on the ‘Create’ button, from the side menu;
3. Choose ‘Share story’;
4. Click the ‘Select file’ button;
5. Select the video you want to share — the upload will start automatically;
6. Type in a clear title and as detailed a description as you can;
7. Add ‘medical tags’ to your story — start typing and select from the drop down list. This will help indexing so your story is easy to discover;
8. Don’t forget to publish your story by clicking the button at the end;
9. Consider adding your story to one or more Playlists — it will help people discover your content faster;
10. You can also publish your Story to Communities you own, or suggest it as a content to communities you’ve joined.

A healthcare Topic is a structured article, written to facilitate better understanding. There are five pre defined templates for healthcare Topics subcategories:

• ‘Procedure / Test’,
• ‘Symptom’,
• ‘Illness’,
• ‘Medicine’,
• ‘Medical Device’.

1. Click on the ‘Create’ button, from the side menu;
2. Choose ‘Create topic’;
3. Select the correct template;
4. Write a clear title and a detailed description;
5. Explain how things work, why people need them and what benefits and risks they have;
6. Add ‘medical tags’ to your story — start typing and select from the drop down list. This will help indexing so your story is easy to discover;
7. Do not forget to publish your topic story by clicking the button at the end;
8. Add it to one or more Playlists and publish on suitable Communities. This will help people discover your content faster.

If you don’t find the information you’re interested in, ask a question!

1. Click on ‘Create’ button, from the side menu;
2. Choose ‘Ask question’;
3. Write clear title, be as specific as you can in asking the question to the community of healthcare professionals;
4. Add a description. You can add a photo if you like;
5. Add medical tags to your question: we’ll notify relevant healthcare providers that your question has been asked;
6. Question can be asked anonymously.

A Playlist is a collection of content with a common theme.

1. Click on the ‘Create’ button, from the side menu;
2. Choose ‘Create playlist’;
3. Type in a clear title and as detailed a description as you can;
4. Add medical tags to your playlist to make it easily discovered;
5. Do not forget to publish it by clicking the button at the end.

If you already have some content:

1. Open your content;
2. Click the ‘Save’ button;
3. Chose a playlist, you want your content to add to, or create a new one.

If you’re creating a new content, which you want to add in one of your playlists — you can just chose a playlist to join before submitting your content.

Communities are places where core members share content about a condition or treatment. People can join to benefit from the experience being shared.

Communities are moderated by Administrators and Moderators. Editors can post content directly. Everyone else can suggest content for posting.

Each item of content in a Community can be commented on.

Communities also support another type of content — a ‘Thread’.

A Thread is a kind of a Question, but with some limitations: you can’t add a photo or a medical tags to a thread. A thread lives only in the community and notifications about a new thread will be received only by the members of that community. Using a thread is the fastest way to ask a question.

There are two ways to create a Community:

1. Click on ‘Create’ button, from the side menu;
2. Chose ‘New community’;
3. Type in a clear title and as detailed a description as you can;
4. Adding medical tags to your Community make it easy to find;
5. Upload a Community photo.

Alternatively, if you already have a playlist with a large amount of content in it, you can convert it into a Community.

When you create a Community, you become the Administrator. Administrators can assign roles to members, eg. Moderators or Editors. Moderator or Editor can post their content directly to a community. Everyone else can ‘suggest’ content for moderation before being added.

1. Click on ‘My Practices’, or select it from the side menu;
2. Select the Add button;
3. Start typing the practice name or location into the search field and select from the drop down menu;
4. Click the Save button at the bottom of the dialog box.

1. Click on ‘My Schedule’, or select it from the side menu;
2. Click on the Add Availability button;
3. Select ‘I’m available’, then the practice location for which you are setting up availability. Next select the appointment duration — This will be used to calculate the number of clinic slots to create.
4. Also select from which day and date this rule is to be activated from and the time from which the clinic should start and end. If you would like to set up a rule for Tuesdays, ensure that you select a date to start from which falls on a Tuesday;
5. Repeat frequency indicates whether you would like the rule to repeat every day of the week or weekly or monthly. Finally, you can optionally set an end date for the ‘rule’;
6. When set up correctly, people will be able to see your available slots highlighted.

Health-Shared is a Progressive Web App (PWA). It is designed to provide an App like experience but without the need to download an app from an App Store.

Health-Shared works within whichever browser you are using on your device or computer by typing www.health-shared.com into the URL bar at the top of the browser.

On Apple devices:

1. Click on the share icon at the bottom of the screen.
2. Select the “Add to Home Screen” button by scrolling vertically.
3. Accept by selecting “Add”.

On Android devices:

1. A prompt will appear when you go to Health-Shared.com to ask if you would like to save to home screen.
2. Click “yes”!