Patients in England are to receive all ‘appropriate’ NHS messages via the NHS App within the next three years, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has pledged.
More than £50m is to be invested in the app to increase the number of messages it sends this year by 70 million from the last financial year, to 270 million.
This will reduce the need for ‘at least 50 million letters’, the DHSC added.
Currently, almost 20 million patients are opted in to receive healthcare messages via the app.
Patients will receive push notifications of appointment reminders, screening invitations and test results directly through the app to improve their access to care. It will become the ‘go-to method of communication’ between the NHS and patients.
The DHSC said that where app messaging was not available, communication would be sent via SMS, or letter as a last resort. Accessible communications will also ‘continue to be supported’ for those with specific requirements, it added.
Those without smartphone access will also ‘benefit’ from the investment, according to the DHSC, as phone lines will be freed up.
It added that this expansion was in addition to work currently underway to improve user experience, such as adding appointments to the calendar on patients’ phones, requesting help from their GP practice and faster logging in methods such as Face ID.
It comes after a new ‘Amazon-style’ prescription tracker has gone live on the NHS App enabling patients to track their prescriptions across 1,500 community pharmacies in England.
‘Harnessing the power of digital communication’ via the NHS App
Health secretary Wes Streeting said: ‘People are living increasingly busy lives and want to access information about their health at the touch of a button, rather than having to wait weeks for letters that often arrive too late. This Government is bringing our analogue health service into the digital age, so that being a patient in the NHS is as convenient as online banking or ordering a takeaway.
‘The NHS still spends hundreds of millions of pounds on stamps, printing and envelopes. By modernising the health service, we can free up huge amounts of funding to reinvest in the frontline.
‘Through the investment and reform in our Plan for Change, we will make the NHS App the front door to the health service and put power in the hands of patients.’
Dr Vin Diwakar, clinical transformation director at NHS England, added: ‘More than 11 million of us now log into the NHS App every month to manage our healthcare, whether ordering a repeat prescription or seeking advice on a medical condition.
‘We’re supporting the switch from analogue to digital by harnessing the power of digital communication channels so that millions more patients can receive important messages about their health direct to their smartphones – all you need to do is enable notifications in the NHS App to see and open messages.
‘The NHS App is already empowering patients by giving them more information and now by increasingly becoming a world-class way of communicating – which will save millions of pounds and free up resources for patient care. I’d encourage anyone who hasn’t got the app on their smartphone to download it now.’
Earlier this year, NHS England said the app was aiming for 100 million logins a month by 2026.
In April, the Department of Health and Social Care announced that NHS App services were being offered by 87% of hospitals in the UK, saving 1.26 million clinical hours since July.
A version of this article was originally published by our sister publication Healthcare Leader.
