Rebuilding the hub: Preparing a vital global healthcare community for its next chapter

Over 92% of NHS Trusts and healthcare professionals across 221 countries rely on the hub to share critical safety insights. When a digital platform carries that level of responsibility, an infrastructure overhaul requires far more than a simple technical patch. 

For the team at Patient Safety Learning, transitioning the hub from Invision Community 4 (IC4) to Invision Community 5 (IC5) meant safeguarding over 20,000 legacy articles, discussions, and member accounts. But it also had to happen without fracturing daily user engagement or putting their non-profit budget at risk.

Having partnered with Patient Safety Learning since building the original platform in 2018, Brew Digital stepped in as a trusted pair of hands to guide them through the migration.

A partnership built on honest conversations

Large-scale platform migrations can be daunting, especially for a lean charity team without dedicated in-house technical resources. With rival agency proposals floating vague estimates and high commercial risk, our long-standing relationship, built on a foundation of candour, helped give the Patient Safety Learning team the clarity the project needed.

Rather than assuming IC5 was the automatic choice, we began with an open, collaborative discovery process. We audited platform usage, evaluated user journeys, and benchmarked alternative community systems including XenForo, vBulletin, and modern bespoke options.

Once IC5 was confirmed as the right long-term home, we worked closely with the Patient Safety Learning team to carefully remove and refactor technical debt and legacy features in place of modern, optimised solutions. This included migrating complex bespoke networks into native Clubs, significantly reducing their ongoing administrative burden.

De-risking a live, mission-critical migration

The primary focus throughout the rebuild was ensuring the Patient Safety Learning team felt completely confident at every stage of delivery.

Working in transparent two-week agile cycles, we gave the team access to a work-in-progress development environment so the team could see exactly how the platform was coming together and flag amendments early. Behind the scenes, we paired structured sprint delivery with AI-assisted QA testing, using Dia to identify the key user pathways to test from our own Jira tickets and Confluence pages.

Alongside the architectural upgrade, we also reset their publishing workflow—introducing draft tools for public contributors and giving internal staff streamlined, native publishing routes.

The results of trusted delivery

Thanks to careful planning and strict scope discipline, the migration was delivered on time and nearly 30% under budget. The rollout was completed seamlessly with zero data loss, zero SEO drop-off, and just nine hours of total downtime during an off-peak window.

Looking ahead

This rebuild clears away years of technical debt and gives Patient Safety Learning a fast, secure, and modern digital estate built to last the next decade.

We are exceptionally proud of our ongoing journey with Patient Safety Learning. Knowing their community has a rock-solid foundation means their team can keep 100% of their focus where it truly belongs: helping to reduce avoidable harm and saving lives across global healthcare.

–

Planning a complex community migration or considering an upgrade to Invision Community 5? Learn more about how we build and support high-performing online communities, or explore our other recent projects on our case studies page.