Zesty Healthcare

Zesty Healthcare, operating as zesty.co.uk, was established in 2012 by co-founders James Balmain (CEO) and Lloyd Price (COO). The venture originated from their personal frustrations with the difficulty of finding and booking dental appointments. This experience fueled their development of a platform to streamline healthcare appointment scheduling.

The company began as an online healthcare appointment booking service in London. Initially, the platform focused on connecting patients with both private and National Health Service (NHS) dental providers, allowing users to find available appointment slots by searching postcodes. Over time, Zesty expanded its services to include a wider range of healthcare professionals such as private doctors, physiotherapists, and osteopaths. The business evolved to provide a comprehensive digital patient portal for NHS trusts and hospitals. This portal empowers patients to manage their outpatient hospital appointments, access clinical correspondence, participate in video consultations, and maintain a personal copy of their health records. The company's business model centers on providing this software to NHS trusts, with contracts such as a five-year deal with The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust to support approximately half a million people.

A significant milestone in Zesty's journey was its acquisition by Induction Healthcare in June 2020, in a deal valued at approximately £12.7 million. This transaction was designed to create an integrated platform connecting patients, clinicians, and healthcare information across multiple hospital systems. The acquisition combined Zesty's patient-facing portal with Induction's clinician-focused collaboration tools. Following the acquisition, James Balmain was appointed joint-CEO of the newly formed group. The company further solidified its market position through a partnership with Cerner, a major supplier of electronic health records, to offer its patient portal to Cerner's NHS clients in the UK and Ireland. More recently, in 2025, Induction Healthcare, including the Zesty solution, was acquired by Vitalhub, which plans to use Zesty as a front-end patient portal for its own electronic health record systems.

Keywords: patient portal, healthcare appointment booking, NHS, digital health, patient engagement, outpatient management, electronic patient record integration, video consultations, health-tech, clinical correspondence, James Balmain, Lloyd Price, Induction Healthcare, Vitalhub, Cerner partnership, hospital software, UK healthcare, patient administration system, online booking, healthcare IT