AgeWell by BridgitCare

AgeWell is a digital healthy ageing support platform designed to help people live well for longer. It offers friendly, personalised support across the Open University’s Five Pillars approach to healthy ageing, helping users think about movement, eating well, hydration, mental stimulation, and social engagement. The AgeWell platform was built, with contributions from Age UK and The Open University, for the purpose of supporting the Take Five to Age Well public health campaign in 2025.

One of the challenges we faced was how to structure healthy ageing advice in a way that was both evidence-informed and easy for members of the public to understand and use. Healthy ageing can feel broad, complex and sometimes overwhelming. People may know they should be more active, eat well, stay hydrated, remain socially connected and keep mentally engaged, but they often need help turning that knowledge into practical, achievable steps.

Darren Crombie CEO BridgitCare

Our joint work helped us incorporate the Five Pillars into the AgeWell platform, provided by Bridgit Care. This platform uses AI-enabled coaches and digital tools to help people explore different aspects of healthy ageing, ask questions, receive guidance, and generate practical plans.

Our collaboration and joint work enabled BridgitCare to:

• Use a credible, evidence-based structure for our healthy ageing support. This meant the AgeWell platform was not simply a general advice tool, but a practical digital implementation of a recognised healthy ageing framework.
• Design support around real-life behaviour change. The Five Pillars provided a way to break healthy ageing down into manageable areas, allowing users to focus on small, practical steps rather than feeling overwhelmed by broad health messages.
• Communicate the purpose of the platform more clearly to partners. The Five Pillars gave local organisations, voluntary sector partners and community groups a simple way to understand what AgeWell was trying to achieve and how it could support their audiences.
• Build AI coaches and support journeys that were more relatable and accessible. Rather than presenting users with abstract categories, we were able to create friendly coaching personas and practical conversations around areas such as movement, nutrition, hydration, cognitive stimulation and social connection.

The platform is available at agewell.bridgit.care and has been provided by Bridgit Care as part of its social enterprise mission to give back to communities. It is free to use, simple to access, and designed to provide practical advice at the point someone needs it. The AgeWell platform supporting the Take Five to Age Well campaign, shows how evidence-based wellbeing guidance, trusted community partnerships, and accessible AI support can work together to help people take practical steps towards ageing well.

Our engagement with the Take Five to Age Well and the Five Pillars for Ageing Well gave us a clear, accessible and research-informed framework for supporting people to age well. The Five Pillars approach was valuable because it translated healthy ageing research into a structure that could be understood by both organisations and the public. It helped frame ageing well as something practical and achievable, focused around everyday behaviours and choices.

Darren Crombie CEO BridgitCare