Digital Social Prescribing Platforms
Joy vs Access Elemental

Which platform delivers the best outcomes for your Primary Care Network, social prescribing teams, communities, and ICS digital strategy?

Compare two leading digital social prescribing solutions and discover why Access Elemental is the trusted choice for ICSs, PCNs, local authorities, universities, housing organisations, and VCSE partners.
Empower link workers, streamline referrals, and demonstrate real impact.

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Reduce administrative burden & clinical time spent on non-medical needs

Improve referral pathways, case management, and reporting

Unlock better visibility and analytics for decision-making

Support preventative care and wellbeing across the community

Software accessibility

Interoperability

Directory of Services

User Support

Analytics

Rio/Mosaic Integration Status

How Each Platform Works

Access Elemental

Access Elemental's digital award-winning platform is currently enabling case workers in various sectors across the UK and Ireland to:

Receive Referrals from numerous sources such as GPs, social workers, Crisis Support Teams, Universities, Housing Associations, etc.
Baseline Assessments: Carry out baseline assessments with patients and co-create wellbeing plans based on the outcomes.
Manage Caseloads: It allows them to effortlessly and confidently manage their caseloads, transforming the lives of many individuals.
Database of Services: Easily browse a live and interactive shared database of services to suit their needs.
Reporting at an individual, cohort or locality level: On where referrals come from, what the reason for referral is, which services patients have attended and the difference the service is making for the person's life.
Bespoke Pathways: Refer support that recommends by co-designing referral pathways that are bespoke to the individual.

Access Elemental supports thousands of digital social prescribing projects since 2013.

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Joy

Joy social prescribing provides two solutions to solve three problems:

Maintaining the efficiency of social prescribing casework
Ensuring directories of services are constantly up to date and maintained
Having effective measurements of outcomes

Marketplace: Connects social prescribers to community-based organisations to enable referrals in the click of a button as well as self-referrals. Recent enhancements (2024-2025) include Client Cases for collaborative case management, Automations for workflow efficiency, and Client Lists for bulk operations.

Case Management App: Easy-to-use application making managing and recording outcomes easier and more efficient. Joy has expanded significantly, now serving patients across PCNs, ICBs, local authorities, and NHS trusts.

Find out more about Access Elemental

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Who Is Access Elemental For?

Local Authorities

Our digital social prescribing platform helps bridge the gap between health, housing, community, and voluntary and local government, providing you with the tools you need to improve and protect social care and physical and mental for your population by:

Providing interoperability with systems in health, housing and the VCSE
Enabling you to make, manage, and report on referrals for your citizens, and the impact and uptake of all council-funded services
Focusing on mental health services, identifying hotspots and service provision gaps
Empowering communities to enhance and manage their health improvement journeys through self-referral pathways and co-produced personalised care plans
Strengthening community support and helping to build VCSE sector capacity

Commissioners

Commissioners in health need to reach the hardly reached in their community and justify expenditure on commissioned programmes and services.

Our social prescribing solution helps them to:

Monitor and track the status of social prescribing referrals, calculate and evidence the health and social value of alleviating health inequalities, and provide evidence-based outcomes
Demonstrate the impact of social prescribing programmes and services, helping to inform the future design of services
Create bespoke social prescribing programmes suited to the needs of the community
Generate data at a neighbourhood, locality, and regional level
Help prove that their commissioned services are value for money

GPs

GPs are under a tremendous amount of pressure to make the right call, to keep patients safe, ease the strain on the front line and ensure patients get the care they need.

Access social prescribing software provides GPs with the ability to:

Access safe, secure effective referral pathways
Monitor the impact of the social prescribing referral
Access several programmes and support initiatives in the local community
Report on evidence that supports the delivery of Health/ Social objectives and other national and regional policies 
Empower patients to access Link Worker support without having to come to the practice

Link Workers

Link Workers have a critical role in helping to reduce the demand for GP services.

Our social prescribing software enables them to:

Receive referrals from numerous sources such as GPs, social workers, crisis support teams, community paramedics
Manage caseloads with ease and confidence
Report at an individual, cohort, or locality level on referrals, the services people are engaging in, and the difference the service is making to the individual’s life
Monitor the impact of the social prescribing referral on patient activation
Carry out baseline assessments with patients and co-create wellbeing plans based on the outcomes

VCSE

Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise Organisations

We know that increasing access to services, reaching those who need the most support, empowering people and demonstrating impact are all important factors to securing funding and developing a sustainable growth strategy.

Our platform supports VCSE organisations to:

Receive referrals for their programmes and services in a safe and secure way

Reach more people and increase awareness of the services they offer
Collect data on the effectiveness and demand for services that can be used in reporting and further funding applications
Strengthen relationships and partnerships with other organisations, agencies, sectors
Reduce time spent on admin save time and much-needed resources for staff

Proven to reduce clinical time spent on non-medical issues

Supports GPs, nurses, mental health teams, housing officers, and link workers with joined-up referrals

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Designed for whole‑system impact

From ICS strategies to community-level outcomes, Elemental supports data-driven commissioning.

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Stronger partnership working across VCSE, housing, education & health

Built for multi-sector collaboration and sustainable funding cases.

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Future‑ready, continuously enhanced platform

Active development supported by customer feedback since 2013

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The main benefit for Elemental for me is recording case notes, appointments and what I’ve prescribed, to keep track of where I am with clients. I would see another benefit as being able to capture all the data.'

'An issue that Elemental has tackled is in seeing what services we are prescribing too the most (eg. bereavement) and maybe identifying where there are gaps in geographical areas.'

Community Link Worker, NHS Highland.

Elemental is the Social Prescribing Platform we have been using for a couple of years now. It has really enhanced our service offer including wider spread, increased referral rates, better case recording and supervision tools. It is helping us to evidence our work and the value of the voluntary and community sector, and I’m really pleased that this support will be available to schemes across Greater Manchester.

Sophie Glinka - Chief Officer The Bureau

Elemental has provided us with a platform to present our findings with authority, encourage more partners to collaborate with us, allowed us as an organisation with a small number of staff to help provide a service to a large number of people and made it so easy for GPs and Clinicians to buy in to making a social prescription at a single click of a finger in consultation times.

Cathy Connolly - CEO Care Merseyside

The Elemental team have been fantastic to work with and the user-friendly system has been so beneficial for the team and the service as a whole. The case management system allows us to work efficiently and effectively for our patients, as well as able to report on service utilisation and outcomes. This is essential to support our Primary Care Network as well as our community.

Caitlin Bays - Programme Lead Age UK Barnet

Why use our social prescribing software?

To help improve the lives of individuals, families, and their carers, social prescribing software will:

Aid multi-sector partnership working, helping you and the people in your community make the best decisions possible.
Help you build confidence that your social prescribing network is connected within the communities you serve.
Provide you with the capability to design, implement, measure and report on effective models and approaches to social prescribing.
Integrate the stakeholders in your health and wellbeing community, such as GPs, link Workers, VCSE organisations, housing professionals, further and higher education institutions and employment support agencies.
Refer people into community-based programmes, services, and interventions, and assess the positive impact of these activities all within a social prescribing system.
Establish, scale and measure the effectiveness of social prescribing and health management activities for each individual.

A black nurse showing something to an elderly lady on the tablet

See the social prescribing software so many organisations use to deliver the highest quality care

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Fill in the form and our team will call you to discuss your requirements at a time that suits you. Discover real examples of how our solution can connect people with a range of non-clinical programmes, services, and events in their local community, to improve their health and wellbeing.

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Digital Social Prescribing Platforms
Joy vs Access Elemental

Benefits of Social Prescribing Platforms

Reduce administrative burden & clinical time spent on non-medical needs

Improve referral pathways, case management, and reporting

Unlock better visibility and analytics for decision-making

Support preventative care and wellbeing across the community

Feature Comparison: What Each Platform Offers