The NHS App after the pandemic

I published my first blog about the NHS App 3 years ago. It was the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and we had just marked a huge milestone: 1 million sign-ups.

The app was coming up to its second birthday and lots of work had already been done to introduce more features and services to help people manage and interact with their healthcare.

What I said then is true today. Every transaction enabled in the NHS App – from self-triage, through ordering a repeat medication, to accessing a test result – saves time for patients and healthcare professionals. It prevents a piece of paper being printed and moving from hand-to-hand through the system.

So, what’s changed? The most obvious thing is the scale at which we are operating.

The NHS App was logged into over 19 million times in May 2023.

The app was built for use at scale. So, when we saw a huge increase in sign-ups during the pandemic, the service was able to support them. We were the most downloaded free iPhone app in England in 2021.

Use remains higher than at the beginning of 2021, with monthly login and unique login numbers at a post-COVID baseline, and we continue to work not only to increase our user base, but to ensure the app is useful for and helpful to its users.

The second thing that has changed – or evolved – is people’s expectations. Our users want us to make it even easier to use services in the app. They’ve told us that being able to start and complete a task on the app is important to them, and they want smooth integration with other services. Being able to see what’s in their health record may lead them to want to contact their GP or get some help and advice, and we need to ensure that works as a cohesive journey for them.

Our priority, and our challenge, is to work out how we increase the number of services available in the app while ensuring that all of them, individually and collectively, offer a good experience for users. This is often complex, but it has to feel simple: we work hard to ensure that, when a user opens the app, they can use the services relevant to them.

We understand that the app is only one part of a patient’s end-to-end journey and that our services interact with different parts of that journey. Our teams of researchers and designers also consider the wider context for these interactions. The NHS App is part of a large and complex landscape of national and locally commissioned systems supporting the NHS. There are other tools and apps available to help people manage their health.  

And it’s not all about digital systems. The teams working across the Digital Citizen agenda know that we have a duty to consider not only the role digital can play, but how what we offer can supplement other channels rather than replace them.

We have been working hard on some new features to make the NHS App more useful to more people.

So, what will the NHS App offer in the future? There is little doubt it will continue to be a key digital tool to support people using the NHS.

On 29 June 2022, the government published a roadmap for future development across the NHS App in A Plan for Digital Health and Social Care. Alongside this, the Digital Citizen teams have set out a roadmap for the future development of the app, published quarterly on the NHS England website.

There are a number of focus areas. These include enabling people to see new information added to their GP health record, giving people more information and choice about their hospital outpatient appointments, and letting people book their flu vaccination appointments on the app. We are also going to modernise the digital prescription service, enhance and extend the use of messaging, and improve navigation to appropriate services. 

This work sees a step-change in the NHS App by leveraging this channel as part of the NHS core service offer for people in England. 

All of this only possible due to the dedication of the NHS App teams, wider NHS England digital teams and NHS suppliers who work closely to deliver a complex set of services all within a single app. It is a team I have been proud to be part of.