What a year it's been for Puffell! Where does the time go? So much has happened in the last 12 months... where do I begin?

Just after celebrating our 2^nd birthday, we kicked the year off at the Health+Care conference where we were able to have so many fantastic conversations. The want from people to do more for themselves is becoming, it seems, more and more front of mind.

In the last 12 months we have reached some big milestones. First off, there are now more than 5,500 users active on Puffell, and this is increasing every single day. Having a larger community, we are now seeing more engagement across the groups on Puffell. I would encourage everyone to ask questions or offer advice where you can; it can make such a difference.

Not only has our community grown, but we have also launched a number of new spaces on Puffell for you all to use. The first of these was the launch of the asthma and viral wheeze space for adults and the asthma and viral wheeze space for children. Both of the spaces contain information, advice and tips about asthma and viral wheeze. It is there to help you manage your asthma and viral wheeze so you can do more of what you want, when you want to do it.

The chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) deck was our second addition in the last 12 months, offering a space for anyone with COPD to manage their long-term condition and helps to keep it under control.

Both the asthma and viral wheeze and COPD spaces offer the ability to create a digital diary, as well as offering the ability to cross reference with air pollution and humidity levels to allow for any trends or patterns to be recognised.

Our pilot for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) is now live in the Slough region. This space has been developed because young people have been waiting for long periods of time to access support. This is an entirely new area for any digital platform to offer support in. Puffell is designed to support young people who can self manage, and we are working with the CAMHS team to refer any young people who need service based intervention.

In line with Mental Health Awareness Week we launched our mood and stress deck, which is a great way to keep track of things such as mood and the amount of sleep you get – both can have a big impact on how you feel!

Here at Puffell we have had a great opportunity through the development of our digital health checks space. We are going to be launching a dedicated Health Checks space where you can get your heart age and then see the impact of your day-to-day life on your heart age. As well as this, we have been involved in helping to map the national strategy for Health Checks with Public Health England (PHE), which Puffell will support - offering a digital platform for Health Checks.

As you can see it’s been a very busy year and we hope that, with you, the next 12 months brings just as much excitement!

Why not invite your friends and celebrate our third birthday with us tonight: https://puffell.com/Pals/FindNewPals

- Stephen