Hearth

What is Hearth and what is it for?

Hearth is a Holochain app for a person's own care record — the things they want the people supporting them to know — held by the person rather than by an organisation. It is built so one record can follow somebody across services that will never share a computer system, with no central service storing or controlling it.

Hearth is a care record that belongs to the person it is about. It responds to a situation its documentation describes plainly: somebody with a learning disability, dementia or a long-term condition is seen by a district nurse, a support worker, a GP, a hospital ward and their family, and each of them writes in a system that does not talk to the others, so the person explains themselves again and again. The README points to an existing national standard for what to write down, the PRSB About Me standard, and argues the unsolved part is where to keep it.

The record lives on the devices of the people in a circle — a private network created around the key of the person it is about — and no central service stores or controls it, which the documentation gives as the reason no organisation has to take on the role of operator. Only the person may write their own About Me. Everyone else may suggest: a son remembers what his mother enjoyed, a support worker notices what settles her, and the person decides what goes in.

A member can record that they read a particular version, and the README notes that the role shown beside that confirmation is typed in by that person and is not checked. The project states its limits as well as its aims: contents are stored in plain text on each member's machine, and leaving a circle removes it only from your own device. The README and its documentation, including an inventory of what is proven and what is not, are the place to read further.

From 4 public sources, checked 23 September 2026.