TLDR: NHS Scotland delivers group consultations by video across more than 25 specialties, with over 9,000 sessions and roughly 42,000 participants to date, and the model maps directly onto how life sciences runs patient support and decentralized trials.
From pandemic workaround to business as usual
NHS Scotland’s Near Me service grew from a pandemic response into routine care, and it now runs around 33,000 video consultations a month, part of more than 2 million held to date. Group consultations sit inside that service. More than 25 specialties use them, among them dietetics, mental health group therapy, chronic pain, and antenatal classes, with over 9,000 group sessions and roughly 42,000 participants so far.
The build was deliberate. Near Me runs on the Attend Anywhere platform, a web-based video service approved for the Scottish public sector, and the group format was developed with clinicians and patients and embedded inside the application itself. A Scottish Government evaluation of the service found high patient satisfaction and an experience comparable to in-person visits, alongside large savings in travel that now reach an estimated 64 million miles avoided.
Quality holds while access widens
The clinical case is the part that travels. A secure, user-centred design widens access for patients who find single appointments hard to attend, and the group format multiplies clinician and educator time across many patients in one session. The Scottish evidence shows that patient experience holds up against in-person care while the service reaches more people for each clinical hour spent.
For an industry that funds patient education and adherence programmes, those results read as proof of concept. The model turns a scarce resource, clinician and educator time, into a format that serves a cohort at once.
Where group video care meets the life-sciences patient journey
Pharmaceutical and medical-device companies already run patient support programmes (PSPs) around chronic therapies, covering onboarding, injection training, adherence coaching, and disease education. Most of that activity happens one patient at a time. The Scottish group model points to a higher-leverage format: structured, clinically governed group sessions by video that hold outcomes while serving more people.
Dietetics and chronic-disease education sit at the centre of the Scottish programme, and they overlap directly with the therapy areas where life sciences invests most in patient engagement. A group video model gives brands a way to support cohorts of patients on a treatment pathway, with the health system as the trusted host and the company as the educational and funding partner behind it.
The decentralized-trial overlap
The same plumbing serves clinical research. Decentralized and hybrid trials lean on video visits for follow-up, a model the FDA formalised in its September 2024 guidance on trials with decentralized elements. One fully decentralized phase 4 study run by Science 37 reported 96% patient retention against roughly 70% in comparable site-based trials. Group video formats extend that logic to shared trial touchpoints such as consent education, cohort check-ins, and patient-reported outcome collection. A national service that already operates group video at scale offers a working template for sponsors who want retention with less patient travel.
What to build now
Patient-engagement and medical teams can pilot group video education for a single chronic therapy area, partnering with provider networks that already run the format. Clinical operations teams can design hybrid trial visit schedules that use group video for shared touchpoints and reserve in-person time for procedures that require it. Market access teams can frame group virtual care as a measurable contribution to access and sustainability, both of which payers and health systems now weigh. Each step borrows an operating model that a national health service has already validated.
The connective work, linking a clinically governed care model to a commercial patient strategy, is the terrain Kainjoo navigates with brands in health and life sciences. Scotland turned a crisis fix into standard practice. The companies that study how it scaled will design patient programmes that reach more people, with the evidence to back them.
References
- Near Me, Digital Services and Innovation (TEC Scotland): https://tec.scot/workstreams/near-me
- Group Consultations (TEC Scotland): https://tec.scot/workstreams/near-me/group-consultations
- Evaluation of the Attend Anywhere / Near Me video consulting service in Scotland 2019-20 (Scottish Government): https://www.gov.scot/publications/evaluation-attend-anywhere-near-video-consulting-service-scotland-2019-20-main-report/
- About Near Me, NHS Scotland National Virtual Consultation Service: https://www.vc.scot.nhs.uk/near-me/
- Conducting Clinical Trials With Decentralized Elements, final guidance, 18 September 2024 (US FDA, Federal Register): https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/09/18/2024-21078/conducting-clinical-trials-with-decentralized-elements-guidance-for-industry-investigators-and-other
- Decentralized Clinical Trials: Embracing the FDA’s 2024 Final Guidance, Science 37 phase 4 retention case (Clinical Leader): https://www.clinicalleader.com/doc/decentralized-clinical-trials-embracing-the-fda-s-final-guidance-0001
