Dr Julian Medical Group combines regulated clinical services with its JMIS technology platform to improve access, capacity, personalisation and continuity across mental health and neurodevelopmental pathways. Organisations can use their own workforce, the platforms clinicians, or a combination of both.
- Dr Julian Medical Group has relationships with 30+ NHS organisations and can be deployed as additional clinical capacity, configurable or white-labelled technology supporting an existing service, or an integrated combination of both.
- The platform has now supported more than one million therapy sessions through a network of 400+ clinicians and is increasingly being deployed across larger and more complex pathways.
- The network supports more than 20 languages, including British Sign Language, and has been adapted to address specific inequalities.
Dr Julian Nesbitt is an NHS GP, Founder and CEO of Dr Julian Medical Group, NHS Clinical Entrepreneur and NHS Innovation Accelerator Fellow. He holds MBChB, BSc, MRCGP, MRCEM and a Postgraduate Diploma in Sports and Exercise Medicine.
Dr Nesbitt founded the Dr Julian platform in 2016 after his experiences working on the NHS frontline, particularly in emergency medicine, where he repeatedly saw people presenting in significant psychological distress while waiting to access appropriate mental-health support.
He joined the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme in 2017 and has subsequently led the Dr Julian platform from an early digital therapy service into an organisation combining regulated clinical services with digital healthcare infrastructure.
Today, JMIS and the Dr Julian platform’s clinical model support NHS and other healthcare organisations through flexible clinical capacity, digital pathway infrastructure and white-labelled technology. The organisation has supported more than one million therapy sessions, with access to a national network of 400+ clinicians, and its technology is increasingly being used to underpin healthcare pathways at Trust, regional and national level.
The innovation began as a way of helping patients access psychological therapy more quickly, but has evolved into a much broader platform capable of supporting an entire care pathway. It combines referral and triage, patient self-booking, intelligent clinician matching, remote consultations, clinical records, assessments and outcome measures, personalised patient dashboards, digital resources, care pathways, workforce management and real-time reporting.
The platform helps people access the right clinician at the right time, in the right way and, where possible, in the right language, matching patients by need, expertise and preference rather than simply by availability. It also creates continuous digital support around appointments, offering personalised, clinically governed resources, exercises and self-management tools before, between and after sessions. Organisations can use the platform as flexible clinical capacity, as configurable digital infrastructure or as a blend of both, allowing it to enhance existing NHS pathways without replacing established systems.
Impact
Dr Julian Medical Group has developed iteratively since 2016, driven by a consistent question: how can we help people reach the right care earlier while making better use of clinical workforce and digital infrastructure?
“I founded Dr Julian Medical Group to improve access to psychological therapy, and joined the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme in 2017 when it was still an early remote-therapy platform. A key decision was to develop the technology through real clinical delivery rather than in isolation, using feedback from patients, clinicians and NHS organisations to shape each stage.”
Dr Julian Nesbitt, Clinical Entrepreneur Cohort 2.
As adoption grew, the platform expanded beyond video consultations to support the wider pathway: referral and triage, self-booking, clinician matching, clinical records, assessments and outcomes, personalised patient dashboards, digital resources, workforce management, reporting and NHS integrations.
Alongside this, the team built a national network of 400+ clinicians, allowing patients to be matched according to clinical need, expertise, availability and preferences rather than geography alone. The network now supports 20+ languages and British Sign Language capability.
The model subsequently evolved from solely delivering clinical care to also powering other healthcare organisations through digital infrastructure. Examples include supporting NHS Practitioner Health and major independent healthcare providers including Vita Health Group.
Major milestones include supporting NHS-commissioned Armed Forces veterans/Op COURAGE from 2022, selection as an NHS Innovation Accelerator Fellow in 2024, and significant system-level expansion in 2026. This includes NHS workforce and WorkWell pathways across North East and North Cumbria, a new whole-ICB Talking Therapies contract across NENC, and technology supporting SAMH’s network of Nook walk-in mental-health hubs in Scotland. More recently, the same infrastructure has expanded into ADHD pre-screening, triage, assessment and neurodevelopmental pathways, while newer partnerships are taking the model further upstream into prevention and earlier intervention.
“Dr Julian Medical Group is rated 4.9/5 from 447 Trustpilot reviews, with 94% five-star reviews and, to our knowledge, is the world’s highest-rated scaled digital therapy platform on Trustpilot.”
Dr Julian Nesbitt, Clinical Entrepreneur Cohort 2.
The platform has also been adapted to address specific inequalities. haPPIE SHE Cares, supporting Black and ethnically minoritised mothers, achieved 100% therapy initiation, 90% completion and 74.1% recovery.
Additionally, it has now supported more than one million therapy sessions, evolving from an early remote-therapy platform into configurable clinical and digital infrastructure supporting care at local, Trust, ICB, regional and national level.
In one NHS workforce pathway in Cumbria, patients started treatment an average of 3.6 days after referral, with 64.6% recovery. Across wider 2024 activity, 80.5% achieved reliable improvement and the DNA rate was just 2.1%.
Overall, the platform has demonstrated impact not only through faster access and clinical outcomes, but through patient choice, health inequalities, economic value, workforce utilisation and the digital infrastructure required to deliver care at scale.
“This was an amazing service. I got to choose a therapist who was an expert to help me with my particular problem (PTSD), just by clicking the filter and then selecting one that worked around my schedule. I was initially sceptical about doing the session online but my god how wrong I was… try this service if you need help – it changed my life.”
Dr Julian platform patient
“Since the integration of the Dr Julian Medical Platform into our operations, we have successfully streamlined a portion of our contracts and services, with a view that we will continue to migrate a significant portion of other contracts. This is largely influenced by the improved satisfaction of our customers and business users through improved UX and streamlined pathways that have been developed in conjunction with the Dr Julian team. The platform’s robust customisation options have been instrumental in our efforts to minimise the array of software applications previously required, enhancing our operational efficiency and reducing complexity… stability has been incredible.”
Tony Coombs, IT Director, Vita Health Group
The Dr Julian platform is not only improving access to clinical care, but is also being used as configurable digital infrastructure by major healthcare organisations, helping simplify pathways, reduce software complexity and improve the experience of both customers and operational teams.
When joining the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme (CEP) in 2017, Dr Nesbitt had a clear understanding of the problem he wanted to solve, but relatively little formal experience of building and scaling a healthcare technology company. Through CEP pit stops, webinars and expert-led learning, he developed his knowledge of NHS and customer needs, value proposition development, commercialisation, funding, pitching, innovation adoption and stakeholder engagement, helping to accelerate the growth of the platform.“One of the most useful lessons was learning to start with the clinical and system problem rather than the technology. This has influenced how the Dr Julian platform has developed ever since. Rather than building features because they were technically possible, we have tried to understand the needs of patients, clinicians, commissioners and healthcare organisations and then develop the technology and clinical model around those needs” said Dr Julian Nesbitt.
Through the programme, Dr Nesbitt has also become part of a community of like‑minded health innovators, opening the door to new collaborations. One of the strongest examples is haPPIE SHE Cares, developed with fellow Clinical Entrepreneurs Gemma Poole and Dr Michael Watts, alongside community organisations and partners. The project focused on improving access to perinatal mental-health support for Black and ethnically minoritised mothers, particularly women who might not engage with conventional referral pathways. It brought together expertise from maternity care, mental health, digital health and community engagement to redesign how women were identified, referred and supported. The collaboration helped demonstrate that the platform should not simply provide the same pathway more efficiently; it could be configured around the needs of a particular population. The programme incorporated trusted community referral routes, culturally informed onboarding and resources, flexible appointments and therapy delivered in languages including Arabic, Urdu and Punjabi.
“haPPIE SHE Cares is probably the clearest example of the value of that network: Clinical Entrepreneurs with different expertise coming together to solve a shared NHS problem in a way none of us would have delivered as effectively alone.”
Dr Julian Nesbitt
The Clinical Entrepreneur Programme became an important gateway into the wider NHS and UK innovation ecosystem, with the platform subsequently receiving support through the NHS Innovation Accelerator, Innovate UK and SBRI Healthcare. Additionally, the team have worked with Health Innovation Kent Surrey Sussex, including an independent health-economic evaluation undertaken with Unity Insights. This estimated an NHS return of £1.33 for every £1 spent and £2.83 total return for every £1 spent when wider social benefits were included, providing an important early evidence base for the model.
Looking to the future
Looking ahead, the focus is on scaling the Dr Julian platform from individual service deployments into broader clinical and digital infrastructure for mental health and neurodevelopmental pathways, while retaining the flexibility to provide clinical capacity, technology alone, or both together.
A key priority is delivery of the new approximately £1 million North East and North Cumbria ICB-wide Talking Therapies contract, providing additional Talking Therapies capacity across the whole region. Alongside clinical care, the platform’s Resource and Care Pathway Builder enables personalised, clinically governed resources, therapeutic exercises and self-management support to be provided before, between and after appointments. This reflects a core principle behind the platform: “appointments are moments; care should be continuous”, helping services combine treatment capacity with earlier intervention, prevention and ongoing support across populations.
The team also aims to build on this model so other ICBs can use national clinical capacity more dynamically, while expanding the SaaS and white-labelled infrastructure already supporting organisations such as NHS Practitioner Health and Vita Health Group.
Dr Nesbitt also aims to strengthen the Resource and Care Pathway Builder so organisations can deliver personalised, governed resources, therapeutic exercises, self-management support and local services throughout a person’s pathway. He also aims to support the expansion of community services, including SAMH’s Nook walk-in hubs in Scotland, through shared digital infrastructure that can underpin neighbourhood mental health services. Additional priorities include progressing ADHD and neurodevelopmental pathways, improving clinician matching, expanding multilingual and BSL capability, and deepening interoperability with NHS systems.
Longer term, the ambition is to move further upstream into prevention and earlier intervention. Collaborations with Paul C. Brunson and My Relational Health demonstrate how personalised digital support can help people identify difficulties earlier and access appropriate resources before problems escalate. Ultimately, the aim is for the platform to provide the digital infrastructure, clinical capacity and continuous personalised support needed to make mental‑health and neurodevelopmental care more accessible, preventative and scalable across whole populations.