With an increasing number of people taking GLP-1 weight loss medication, it’s crucial that operators have the right tools in place to support members throughout their journey.
As a relatively new area of practice for operators, relying on Excel spreadsheets or paper-based systems will quickly fall short when it comes to providing meaningful insight, demonstrating outcomes and evidencing success for potential funding.
Regardless of whether participants are on a specialist GLP-1 pathway, a weight management programme or another referral scheme, individuals using GLP-1s need structured support both while they’re on the medication and when they come off it.
And this has never been more important. Recent research from Oxford’s Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences1, published in The BMJ, shows that people tend to regain weight much faster after stopping weight-loss drugs than after completing behavioural weight loss programmes such as diet and exercise support.
Under the latest NICE guidance2, healthcare teams should monitor people for at least a year after they complete treatment and offer additional support where needed. For operators, this means having systems in place that can manage long-term follow-ups.
Supporting the entire GLP-1 journey
ReferAll’s all-in-one referral and reporting software is already being used by operators to support participants through their GLP-1 weight management journey, from the point of referral, whether via professional or self-referral, through ongoing delivery, monitoring, evaluation and follow-up, capturing specific referral reasons and additional support needs.
Thanks to a new report from Les Mills and ukactive3, we know that exercise, particularly strength training, is critical in preventing the loss of lean body mass among people taking weight loss drugs. The findings reinforce the importance of ensuring people have access to expert advice, tailored exercise guidance and support throughout their GLP-1 journey, reinforcing the need to look beyond weight loss.
ReferAll’s dedicated scheme types allow operators to manage GLP-1-related programmes separately from other services, such as exercise referral or cancer rehabilitation, so they can be consistently tracked without being lost in wider programmes.
Key demographic data, such as age, gender and postcode, can be recorded, giving operators deeper insights. For example, identifying links between GLP-1 usage and areas of deprivation.
In addition to monitoring a wide range of biometric data, providers can select validated questionnaires, such as the MH1 mental health questionnaire, to better understand the mental wellbeing of participants during the programme and beyond. The software makes it easy to analyse complex questionnaire data at key intervention points, giving operators a much more detailed picture of the participants and their outcomes.
Using Pathways to give the right support
ReferAll’s Pathways feature allows providers to group referrals and track participants through different stages of a programme, while offering flexibility to shape their programmes to suit their organisation and local agendas.
For example:
- Initial phase - induction activities, baseline measurements and questionnaires, and flagging that a participant is taking GLP-1 medication
- Maintenance phase - ongoing activities, engagement tracking and progress monitoring
- Transition points - identifying when someone comes off GLP-1s and recording new or changing support needs
- Data collection - capturing recommended data at initial, mid-point, end-point and post-programme stages, including optional integrations such as leisure management systems and MH1 Global
- Follow-up - gathering evidence at six and 12 months to review longer-term outcomes.
Pathways act as a simple tagging and structuring tool, making it easy to see which journey a participant is on and ensuring the right support is offered at the right time.
Learning what works
Another benefit of using ReferAll is the ability to compare outcomes across different programmes. Operators can analyse how people taking GLP-1 medication perform on different referral schemes, for example, comparing a general exercise referral programme with a dedicated weight management pathway.
This insight is invaluable. You may discover that participants taking GLP-1s achieve better outcomes on one programme than another, allowing you to adapt and expand your offer and improve results for future participants.
No one wants to be bogged down in administration. As more people use weight loss medication, ReferAll makes it easier for operators to record, monitor and analyse the experiences of GLP-1 participants and the effectiveness of the programmes supporting them. This will help improve programmes, provide more robust evidence for future funding and, most importantly, give participants a better chance of success in maintaining weight loss and wellbeing once they finish taking medication.
Get in touch to see how our software can support your GLP-1 pathways and wider weight management services, helping people at every stage of their journey. 📲 
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References:
1 https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2026-01-08-new-study-finds-stopping-weight-loss-drugs-linked-faster-regain-ending-diet
2 https://www.nice.org.uk/news/articles/people-need-support-to-keep-weight-off-after-treatment-ends