No one should face a diagnosis alone.
Alongside Health is the companion for the moment of diagnosis. Starting with Iris for sight loss, and growing to include Clara for cancer, Sam for stroke, Aria for breathing conditions, and Theo for diabetes. Voice-first, screen-reader native, calm by design.
The moment this was built for
It's 11pm. You've just been told your sight is going to change. The letter in your hand uses words you don't recognise.
Your family is asleep. Tomorrow you have to function. Tonight, you need something steady.
That's the moment Alongside Health was built for.
— Judith Reece, founder
Iris - Chat with your companion for sight loss
Built for people with sight loss from any cause, including macular degeneration, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, retinopathy of prematurity, nystagmus, hereditary conditions, accidents, and other medical causes. For you and the carers, families, and trusted advisors supporting you. Screen-reader compatible. Works with your voice tools. Calm by default.
What Iris does
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Translates your letters
Turns diagnosis and referral letters into plain English — without losing the detail your clinician needs you to know.
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Prepares you for appointments
Helps you name what matters, and surfaces the questions you didn't think to ask.
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Walks the NHS pathway with you
Explains what comes next, what each letter means, and when to act.
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Sits with you when it's hard
Honest, never frightening. Calm pacing. Real language. Always there at 3am.
What Iris isn't
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Not a doctor.
We never diagnose, treat, or replace clinical advice.
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Not a chatbot.
Purpose-built for health. Trained on real pathways, not generic internet text.
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Not falsely optimistic.
We name the hard thing, then offer the next step.
Iris is the flagship. Four more companions are also live now.
Each companion is built for a specific condition and audience, for the person with the diagnosis and for the carers, families, and trusted advisors supporting them. They all share the same warmth, the same clinical rigour, and the same quiet commitment to being alongside you.
Health Navigator
Try our free companion at theaiark.org. The widest door into the Alongside Health family — general health navigation, appointment prep, letter explanation.
Free — try nowIris
Chat with Iris, your companion for sight loss from any cause. For you and the carers, families, and trusted advisors supporting you.
Flagship companion — £34.99Clara
Chat with Clara, a cancer navigator for people moving through the UK cancer pathway and their carers, families, and trusted advisors, from two-week wait to treatment decisions.
Live now — £34.99Sam
Chat with Sam, your stroke companion for stroke survivors and their carers, families, and trusted advisors, the first weeks, the rehab pathway, the slow return.
Live now — £34.99Aria
Chat with Aria, your breathing companion for people with COPD and respiratory conditions, and their carers, families, and trusted advisors. Recognising when breathlessness is routine, and when to act.
Live now — £34.99Theo
Chat with Theo, your diabetes companion for people newly diagnosed with type 1 or type 2, and their carers, families, and trusted advisors. Practical, daily, no lecturing.
Live now — £34.99Three ways people come to us.
Different starting points. Same commitment — calm, credible, human support when it matters most.
For you & your family
If you or someone you love has just been diagnosed, an Alongside companion is for you. Try the free Health Navigator first, or go straight to a condition-specific companion like Iris, Clara, Sam, Aria, or Theo.
You don't need to be comfortable with technology. Everything is screen-reader compatible and works with your device's voice tools. If you can speak to a phone, you can use it. And if you need support to set it up, we're here.
What you get
- Instant access via email, phone, or screen-reader
- Set up in 30 minutes — assisted setup available
- Unlimited use, always available
- Your conversations stay on your device. We don't store what you say.
For charities: design partners
We're taking two charity design partners in 2026. Sight-loss-focused first, then broadening as our companion family grows. This isn't a services arrangement. It's a partnership that makes the product stronger for your community and for everyone who comes after.
You bring the community insight, the lived experience, and the clinical grounding. We bring the platform, the accessibility discipline, and twenty years of pharmaceutical and healthcare strategy. The companion carries your brand. The outcome data is shared. The product improves for both of us.
Design partnership
- Co-designed with your community and clinical advisors
- Your brand on the front, our platform behind it
- Shared impact data and outcome reporting
- Preferred terms for sight-loss focused charities
For NHS & pharma: early conversations
Commercial pilots from 2027. In the meantime, we welcome early conversations, especially if you run an ophthalmology service, an oncology pathway, or a pharma patient-support programme.
We're deliberately not rushing into procurement. We're building the product right with patients and charity design partners first, so that when we do take on an NHS or pharma pilot, it works, and we can back it with outcome data, not just a deck. Built by a founder with twenty years in pharmaceutical R&D and digital health, so you'll be speaking to someone who understands adherence, service improvement, and beyond-the-pill from the inside.
Keep in touch
- Peer-to-peer conversations with Judith now
- Pathway co-design expertise in-house
- Information governance & GDPR-ready
- Pilot-ready once outcome data is published
A career spent researching, building and transforming healthcare. Harvard, AstraZeneca, GSK.
And in the middle of all of it, my children were born with visual impairments. Prostate cancer came for our family.
I felt as lost as anyone.
All that expertise, and I still couldn't find the path. Still couldn't quiet the fear. Still couldn't bridge the gap between what the system offered and what a frightened, exhausted person could actually reach.
That's when it became impossible to ignore: Knowledge is not navigation. Expertise does not dissolve fear.
The clinical information exists. The pathways exist. But no one is sitting with people through the hard parts.
So I built Alongside Health, AI companions that do exactly that. They acknowledge fear before offering information. They turn a diagnosis into a next step. They stay with you.
Calm pacing. Quiet design. Built to be used on the worst days.
Most health companions are built by people designing for themselves. We built ours for the audience that's hardest to get right — people newly diagnosed with sight loss, often elderly, often frightened, often relying on assistive technology. If it works for them, it works for everyone. That discipline carries into every companion that follows.
Screen-reader compatible, from the start.
Built to work with the assistive technology you already use. Compatible with screen readers and voice input tools.
Works with your voice tools.
Use your device's built-in voice input or third-party voice tools. Type if you prefer. Speak if it's easier. Built for low vision and low energy.
Clear, accessible text.
Built with Atkinson Hyperlegible font, designed by the Braille Institute for low vision readers. High contrast and adjustable text size on this site.
Calm pacing. Follows you.
No notifications. No streaks. No gamification. Presence, not pressure.
Honest boundaries. Always.
When something is outside our scope, we say so — and point you to the right person.
Your data, your terms.
Your conversations stay on your device. Plain-English privacy. No sale of personal information, ever.
Building for the hardest audience isn't a constraint. It's what lets us serve every audience that follows.
Simple. Honest. No tricks.
Start free. Upgrade when you're ready. For charity design partners, we scope the partnership together — two slots open for 2026, sight-loss focus first.
Health Navigator
- General health navigation
- Appointment preparation
- Letter explanation
- No account required
Any single companion
- Condition-specific support
- Screen-reader compatible, works with your voice tools
- Unlimited use
- Assisted setup included
- Choose: Iris, Clara, Sam, Aria, or Theo
For charities
- Co-designed with your community
- Your brand on the front
- Shared impact & outcome data
- Preferred terms for small charities
Questions people actually ask.
How is this different from ChatGPT or other AI chatbots?
The companions do not search the internet. They work from a carefully built knowledge base about each specific health condition and available support. Each companion is trained for one condition with clear clinical boundaries, evidence-informed responses, and a tone designed for people at vulnerable moments. If it helps: think less "automated helpdesk", more "knowledgeable friend who happens to have worked in pharma for twenty years".
Can it diagnose me or change my treatment?
No. We don't diagnose, we don't treat, and we don't replace your clinician. What we do is help you understand what's already been said, prepare well for your next appointment, and walk the pathway step-by-step so you know what's coming. If something needs a clinician, we'll say so.
Is my data safe?
Your conversations stay on your device. We do not store what you say to your companion. We only keep a record that you used the service and when. The companions use Anthropic's Claude AI to respond to you. We never sell your information. For NHS and charity partnerships, we work with you to meet your information governance requirements.
Will it work with my screen reader or voice input?
Yes. The companions are designed to work with the assistive technology you already use, including screen readers and voice input tools. If you encounter any barriers, please tell us so we can fix them.
Who built this?
Alongside Health is built by Reece Advisory Ltd, founded by Judith Reece — twenty years in pharmaceutical R&D strategy and digital health transformation, now applied directly to patient support. We're a small, focused UK team, and we'd rather build fewer things well than many things adequately.
Why are the companions named Clara, Sam, Aria, Iris, and Theo?
Clara comes from a Latin word meaning clear and bright. It felt right for someone whose job is to help make a very unclear and frightening time feel a little more navigable.
Sam is a name that means to listen, or to be heard. That felt like exactly the right starting point for this kind of conversation.
Aria means air in Italian, breath, essentially. It felt like a fitting name for a companion whose whole purpose is to support people for whom breathing is at the centre of everything.
Iris is the part of the eye that controls how much light comes in. It felt like a quiet way to honour sight, without making the name feel heavy.
Theo comes from a Greek word meaning gift. People living with diabetes didn't ask for it and don't deserve the judgment that often comes with it. The name felt like a small way of saying you are valued here.
Why aren't you taking NHS or pharma pilots yet?
Because we'd rather earn them. NHS procurement cycles run eighteen to twenty-four months, and most early-stage healthtech burns out trying to navigate them before the product is ready. We're building Iris properly with patients and charity design partners first. When we open commercial pilots in 2027, we'll come to the table with outcome data, not just a deck. In the meantime, we're always open to an early conversation.
The moments that change everything deserve a companion who understands them.
Whether you're newly diagnosed, caring for someone who is, or building services for a patient community — we'd like to hear from you.