Experts Explain: Investing in innovative technologies: Releaf’s custom-built platform. 

Not impressed with the existing health tech solutions available, our Chief Technology Officer Oliver Soar took a different approach, and built Releaf’s bespoke platform from scratch.

Designed to be intuitive, adaptable, and most importantly - effective and efficient - our platform was the first of its kind in the Health Tech domain, and it’s something we’re incredibly proud of. 

From its initial design in 2022, to today in March 2025, the platform has continuously evolved, with thousands of updates implemented along the way from facilitating debit and credit payments, as well as Apple Pay and Google Pay, to incorporating NHS login and OCR technology - we haven’t stopped investing in innovative technologies.

So, to understand the tech and strategy behind it all, we sat down with the man who has been at the forefront of its development from the very beginning: Releaf’s Chief Technology Officer, Oliver Soar. 

Here’s what he had to say: 

Can you tell us all bit more about the Releaf platform’s initial design and development?

Sure. So, prior to Releaf, I’d been working in software engineering for nine years, specialising in Health Tech since 2017, and the concept for Releaf’s platform came in early 2022.  

There’s a lot of ‘pitfalls’ so to speak, when it comes to Health Tech, and in my previous role we’d built custom systems to ensure safe prescribing, to prevent people from being overprescribed drugs that can be misused, or dangerous in high quantities, and that was really valuable expertise to have coming into Releaf.

Similarly, we’d implemented tech to facilitate the dispensing of thousands of prescriptions a day, from getting the prescriptions to the pharmacy, to getting everything needed to dispense to the patients all sorted in a such a short time frame, which is exactly what we needed to do at Releaf too.

So, we started by identifying challenges like these and then worked out the parameters of how we can achieve exactly what we wanted to. Development itself really started in 2023, and we soft-launched the platform in September of that year.  

What key changes were implemented to prepare for Releaf’s official launch in February 2024?

Just before the official launch, we implemented a new booking system and redefined the consultation scheduling process because we just knew we could do better - and we have.

We also fully integrated our medical cannabis card initiative to be automatically triggered instead of manually requested and launched an e-commerce store in December 2023 with everything patients need to get started with their new cannabis-based treatment plan. 

These initiatives, along with those we’ve implemented since, have focused on streamlining the user’s experience to make things as simple as possible.

Since it’s conception, we’ve now implemented thousands of updates to the platform, grown to a team of 15 developers, and had over 60,000 people sign up to use our services.

What makes Releaf’s platform unique in the health tech industry?

The entire platform is completely custom-built, all with the end user’s experience in mind. 

From a developer’s perspective, this is what makes Releaf’s platform unique - we’ve created a framework from scratch that can be constantly built upon. Its architecture is flexible so we can make quick adaptations and updates on a daily basis to continually improve. Essentially, it will never become outdated.

The platform allows for end-to-end prescription management, from triage to consult to prescription dispensing - it has a user-friendly interface that doctors find faster and easier to use compared to traditional systems.

Patients have also given us great feedback on how convenient and easy to use the patient portal is too, and how useful certain features are like the Travel certificate request tab, the ecommerce shop and the resource section with FAQ videos.

What would you say were the biggest challenges when creating Releaf’s platform?

I think the biggest challenge was ensuring the tech could support such rapid growth, and rapid feature development because of the nature of technology, and, the nature of the medical cannabis industry itself.

We were determined to make medical cannabis accessible to those that are eligible for these treatments, and after conducting our own market research, it was clear that was an overwhelming proportion of the general population.

But, we were also very well aware that very few people were actually accessing these treatments, and because the industry is so new here in the UK – we needed to establish the right way of doing things, develop our own SOPs if you like, to ensure patients aren’t let down, their treatments aren’t disrupted, and they don’t encounter any issues on behalf of our tech.

We didn’t want to just make it possible; we wanted to make it a seamless, personable, and an all-round positive experience for patients and doctors alike. So, we set ourselves high standards you could say.  

What would you say is the most groundbreaking feature?

Personally, I think it’s the OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology we’ve incorporated.

In my opinion, OCR tech has been severely underutilised by those involved in healthcare. It has so many advantages, it’s not only safe and secure, but it also streamlines the prescription process, and this in turn benefits patient experiences. 

Of course, the ability to request SCR information automatically using integrated NHS login is also particularly innovative and makes things much simpler for patients.

And finally, can you tell us about any upcoming developments to Releaf’s platform?

I can’t say too much on that front! But, we are considering a number of new features, such as utilising AI in our triage processes and improving our accessibility features during consultations through various means, but just know, good things are coming!

So far, we’ve invested over £5 million into Releaf’s platform, and it’s been worth every penny.