Referral infrastructure
Shift left, into the community.
Joy is the referral infrastructure between the care system and live community services, including 295 dedicated work and health programmes. Any care setting can refer in: general practice, hospital teams, community services, or people themselves. Find people, connect them to real support, and see what changed.
1,903,000 referrals and support cases, across systems covering 22.5 million patients.
Neighbourhood impact, before and after referral
123,617 patients, measured July 2026
17.5 to 10.5 /patient/yr
1.61 to 0.60 /patient/yr
0.90 to 0.40 /patient/yr
4,039 of 4,040 participant records
Real measured figures; trend shapes illustrative
Trusted by 104 customer organisations, commissioned in 28 of England's 36 integrated care systems
Joy is commissioned in 28 of England's 36 integrated care systems.
516,400 referrals and support cases in the last 12 months, from 1,794 organisations across 498 primary care networks. Day to day that is about 5,000 referrals, signposts and support cases every working day. Referrals start anywhere: GP practice, hospital, council, community service, or self-referral. Joy works across whatever systems your teams already use.
Hover an area, or search above, to see the activity in your part of England.
Source: Joy platform database, July 2026; ONS Open Geography Portal ICB boundaries (April 2026) and local authority district boundaries (December 2025). Latest platform snapshot. Shading and nodes reflect referral and service activity across each area.
Neighbourhood health
Your plan will be marked on two things: whether demand moved, and whether you can prove it. Joy is the live community capacity your plan needs on day one, with the evidence read from the GP record and the acute numbers. Works alongside your population health analytics and clinical systems.
For chief executives, chief strategy officers and neighbourhood programme leads.
Explore neighbourhood healthWork & health
WorkWell funding went live in April 2026. Delivery starts in November. Your economic inactivity target is set, and the DWP return is the piece most teams worry about. Joy makes it manageable: it finds the people, fills your programmes, and records every intervention and outcome in a DWP-compliant way, ready to submit.
For work and health leads, and programme leads such as (WorkWell, Youth Guarantee Trailblazers, IPS, IPS for drug and alcohol, IPS for severe mental illness, Connect to Work).
Real delivery across the work and health programmes.
From finding good-fit participants to filling every place, Joy supports WorkWell, Connect to Work, the Youth Guarantee, IPS in primary care, IPS for severe mental illness, and IPS for drug and alcohol. We record each intervention and outcome to DWP standard, and file the DWP return for WorkWell and the Youth Guarantee.
work and health referrals in the last 12 months
work and health referrals since the programmes began
live work and health services listed today, across every named scheme
Source: Joy platform database, updated live (referrals and services counts).
Joy finds the people who can be diverted.
Frequent attenders. People stuck on repeat fit notes. Long-term conditions quietly getting worse. People who have fallen out of work. Joy surfaces them automatically where they present, in any care setting or by self-referral, or takes a feed from the population health tools you already run.
Risk-stratified list, AFC Richmond PCN
Jamie Tartt Frequent attender
14 GP contacts this year
Keeley Jones Repeat fit notes
3 in 12 months
Sam Obisanya HbA1c drifting
52 mmol/mol
Illustration, synthetic names and values
Joy matches them to live community capacity.
Each person is matched to the right service automatically: 83,100 community and voluntary sector services, listed and taking referrals today. Real capacity your teams can refer into.
Source: Joy platform, live aggregate, 3 October 2026
Personalised recommendations, Dani Rojas
Richmond WorkWell
Fit note history; work and health support addresses the employment barrier.
AFC Richmond Wellbeing Walks
Low activity recorded; supported movement fits the clinical picture.
AFC Richmond Friendship Cafe
Social isolation risk; peer connection group has capacity today.
Illustration, synthetic names and values
Joy measures the impact where you are marked.
The change is read from the GP record, before and after, per neighbourhood. Workings shown, every number traceable to its source.
Measured before and after referral
-40%
GP contacts
-63%
A&E attendances
+13 pts
Wellbeing (ONS4)
Real measured deltas, whole cohort
THE STRATEGIC CASE
Bend the three curves.
Every system plan is trying to bend the same three curves: outcomes, demand, and cost. They are one chain, not three projects. Better outcomes for the people the system reaches least lead to less acute demand, and less acute demand lowers cost. Joy contributes to each curve alongside the rest of your system, and measures each one in the GP record.
Better outcomes where inequality bites hardest.
Community referral reaches the people clinical pathways miss: 1.4x as many referrals reach the Core20 most deprived fifth of neighbourhoods as their share of the population, and the most deprived tenth is reached at 4.3x its population share. The improvement shows up across the whole validated instrument set, not one measure.
16,806 paired journeys, 73% of people improved. The same pattern holds across validated instruments.
Source: Joy platform database, July 2026
Less acute demand, measured, not modelled.
When the underlying need is met in the community, people stop arriving at the front door of acute care. Joy reads the change straight from the GP record, before and after, per neighbourhood. Community referrals keep rising (516,400 in the last 12 months) while acute demand per patient falls.
From 1.61 to 0.60 per patient per year, whole measured cohort of 123,617 patients.
Source: Joy platform database, July 2026
Lower cost through referral productivity.
Every avoided contact is clinician time back, and every avoided attendance is money against published NHS unit costs. The saving follows from the first two curves; Joy makes it a live number per neighbourhood, with the attribution stated, never hidden.
In the last 12 months, measured from live Joy activity: about £12m of clinician time at the £49 published PSSRU unit cost, with an explicit attribution band (80% central, 60 to 100%).
Source: Joy platform database, July 2026
The chain runs one way: better outcomes for underserved groups lead to less acute demand, and less acute demand lowers cost. Figures as of July 2026, whole-cohort framing unless stated.
Measured before and after community referral, read from the GP record: same patients, matched windows either side. Verified against the live platform, July 2026.
from 17.5 to 10.5 per patient per year, high-dependency patients, twelve months each side
Source: Joy platform database, high-dependency patients, GP record before and after
from 1.61 to 0.60 per patient per year, same cohort
Source: Joy platform database, July 2026
from 0.90 to 0.40 per patient per year, same cohort
Source: Joy platform database, July 2026
16,806 paired journeys, 73% of people improved
Source: Joy platform database, July 2026
48.3 to 46.9 mmol/mol, 462 paired GP-record readings
Source: Joy platform database, July 2026
cohort average 11.5 down to 7.7, 325 paired journeys; GAD-7 anxiety: 67% improved, 13.9 down to 9.7 (147 paired)
Source: Joy platform database, July 2026
from 47 to 35 per 1,000 patients per year, n=80,330, GP and referral records combined
Source: Joy platform database, July 2026
These are before-and-after comparisons, based on our real experience of referring patients. The independent evidence base points the same way: 28% fewer GP consultations and 24% fewer A&E attendances where social prescribing is effective (University of Westminster).
Includes signposting activity. External corroboration: University of Westminster evidence review.
Approved by NHS
Joy connects people with local services easily, showcasing measurable outcomes.
Referrals and support cases
Professional sign-ups
Live community services
Machines running JoyConnect
Covering 22.5 million patients, with referral activity in 36 of England's 36 integrated care systems.
The whole system can refer in.
This is what good looks like in a mature neighbourhood health service, the sort of thing you can build to.
Every referrer goes straight into support (thin dashed lanes, illustrative routing). GP surgeries also route people through the link workers and neighbourhood teams in the middle, who fan out across the need categories; self-referrals and informal carers sit underneath them. Pill percentages are the modelled target shares.
Source: Joy's view of what good looks like in a mature neighbourhood health service, anchored to the Neighbourhood Health Framework (March 2026), the 10 Year Health Plan and national need indicators, and checked against the neighbourhoods on Joy furthest ahead.
THE PLATFORM
One loop, four tools.
Joy covers the whole journey from first contact to measured outcome, and works alongside your population health analytics, records and case management.
JoyConnect
Refer from any system your team already uses, with the deepest integrations built for the GP Connect systems, SystmOne and EMIS. Three clicks from where the person presents.
JoyMarketplace
The live network. 83,100 community services listed and taking referrals, open to professionals and to self-referral.
Joy Case Management
Caseloads, appointments and outcome capture for the neighbourhood and WorkWell teams doing the delivery, with DWP-compliant recording built in.
JoyInsights
The evidence engine. Demand, inequality and outcome analytics, every figure traceable to its source.
Built for NHS data from day one.
NHS Approved. ISO 27001. Cyber Essentials Plus. NHS IM1. NHS Data Security and Protection Toolkit. Patient data is used to route people to support and to measure what changed for them, and for nothing else.
Our DPIA, sub-processor list, and full assurance documentation are in the Joy trust centre.
See what Joy could do in your area.
Talk to our team about your neighbourhood, your data and your priorities. Not ready for a call? Start with the evidence.