Our story
More than a decade of putting people at the centre of digital health
Health Fabric has built digital health products with GPs, councils and communities since 2012. Unity is the result of everything we learned along the way.
2012
Our first product working in GP practices
TIME 2025
World's Top HealthTech Companies, rated Very High
1,400+
Sandwell residents supported through our Healthy Ageing app
15 languages
at Unity's launch in 2021
Where it started
Health Fabric was founded on a simple belief. A medical record can be accurate and still miss the most important thing: the person behind it, their life, their family and what matters to them. From our first app in 2012, we set out to give people the tools to manage their own health, and to give the people caring for them that missing context.
Milestones
Our journey so far
2012
Recognised from the start
Our first implementation, at a GP surgery in Staffordshire, was Highly Commended at the HSJ Awards.
2013
On the NHS App Store
Launched as one of 10 validated apps on the NHS App Store, chosen as a Department of Health supported app, and commissioned to work in Sandwell.
2014
National attention
Featured on BBC's The One Show as a five-star app in the NHS Choices library, and named an official partner of the NHS Innovation Challenge Prizes.
2016
Opening up health data
Contributed to NHS England's Code4Health work on open, interoperable health information.
2019
Unity begins
Work began on Unity, a multilingual self-care platform, developed with a GP practice in Tamworth.
2022
National funding
Won a UKRI Healthy Ageing Challenge award with Sandwell Council, and an SBRI Healthcare award to support autistic young adults.
Read more2024
Reaching people others miss
Sandwell's Healthy Ageing app, built on Unity, supported more than 1,400 residents and was shortlisted for a national Public Health Award. Unity also became an accredited EMIS partner.
Read more2025
World recognition
Named in TIME's World's Top HealthTech Companies 2025, in the Health Information and Management category, rated Very High.
2026
Unity reimagined
Unity relaunches as a team of AI business analysts, built on everything we learned about listening to people.
"The most valuable part of everything we built was never the app. It was the conversation with real people about what they needed."
Those conversations changed our content, our design and our results. AI now lets us hold them at a scale that was never possible before. That is what Unity does today.
Meet the analystsWhere it began
Where it began
A look back at our original Health Fabric app.
Satnam Bains
Founder, Health Fabric
Satnam has spent his career at the meeting point of technology and health. Before and alongside Health Fabric, he has held senior architecture and leadership roles at IBM, Capita Healthcare, NHS Blood and Transplant and BUPA.
- Expert member, WHO Digital Health Advisory Group roster of experts
- Assessor for Innovate UK grant funding
- Author of Replugged: From Mainframes to Mindframes
In the press
What others have said
UKAuthority
Sandwell Council to use Unity platform and app in healthy ageing programme
2022
Building Better Healthcare
App helps patients manage long-term conditions
2021
The Journal of mHealth
Health Fabric's Unity app to help patients manage long-term conditions
2021
Health Tech Digital
App launched in multiple languages to help patients manage long-term conditions
2021
HTWorld
Health Fabric and Sandwell Council secure Healthy Ageing Challenge funding
2022
SBRI Healthcare
Health Companion Ltd, Health Fabric, Unity
2022
Work with a team that listens
Everything we have built since 2012 started with listening to people. Tell us what you need to understand.