Key Summary
- The app will change the way people get health advice, manage appointments and interact with services
- Patients will be able to book, move, and cancel appointments
- The app will provide instant advice for patients who need non-urgent care
- Parents need not carry the 'red book' of their children’s medical records during every appointment
As part of its 10-year Health Plan, the Labour government will load more features into the NHS app to make it the 'digital front door' to health services.
The app will make it easier for everyone to access the care they need and change the way people access health advice, manage appointments, and interact with services.
Prime minister Keir Starmer said, "For far too long, the NHS has been stuck in the past, reliant on letters, lengthy phone queues and even fax machines.
"But that doesn’t match the reality of our daily lives, where everything from shopping and banking to entertainment and travel can be sorted with the touch of a button from our phones."
Using the app, patients will be able to book, move, and cancel all their appointments, thereby ending the ‘8 am scramble’ for a GP.
The app will use artificial intelligence (AI) to provide instant advice for patients who need non-urgent care, and it will be available 24/7.
People will be able to manage their medicines and book vaccines from their phones, connect with a clinician for a remote consultation, and even leave a question for a specialist to answer without making an appointment.
This digitisation of the booking process alone will help the NHS save £200 million over 3 years.
The patients will be able to self-refer on the app to mental health talking therapies, musculoskeletal services, podiatry and audiology - freeing up GPs and new neighbourhood health centres to focus on providing direct care.
This will also dramatically slash waiting lists for these services.
For parents, the new app will ensure that they don't need to carry the 'red book' of their children’s medical records during every appointment.
The NHS app will have a feature 'My Children', a digitised ‘red book’, where parents can get advice and support.
Another proposed feature will be 'My Health', which will bring data like blood pressure, heart rate and glucose levels together, and include real-time data from wearables or smart devices.
The government will make the single patient record possible through new legislation.
It will be the duty of every health and care provider to make the information they record about a patient available in the single patient record.
The highest levels of security will be maintained to safeguard these records.
Health secretary Wes Streeting said the NHS App will "become a ‘doctor in your pocket’, bringing our health service into the 21st century."
NHS England chief executive Sir Jim Mackey said, "Millions of us already have the app downloaded on our phones and the improvements we’re introducing as part of the 10-year Health Plan, from booking appointments and speaking to clinicians online to seeing all your medical records in one place, will make the NHS App the digital front door to the NHS."
