NHS App Roadmap highlights latest pilots, priorities and plans
NHS England has shared the latest updates to its NHS App Roadmap, including recently completed initiatives, current areas of focus, and next steps in areas such as appointments, prescriptions, health records, and user experience.
Expanding AI-enabled triage, enabling more patients to request follow-up appointments, and helping users to view and understand test results are among the planned enhancements for the app.
As part of the 10 Year Health Plan for England, the NHS App is positioned as the “digital front door” to the health service.
“The NHS App will become a ‘doctor in your pocket’, bringing our health service into the 21st century,” said health and social care secretary Wes Streeting in July when the 10 Year Plan was published.
The government said its goal was to replace two-thirds of outpatient appointments – which cost a total of £14bn (US$19bn) a year – through automated information, digital advice, direct input from specialists, and patient-initiated follow-ups via the NHS App.
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Appointments and prescriptions
According to the latest roadmap, more than 400,000 GP surgery appointments are booked or cancelled on the NHS App each month.
Work is underway to enable more patients on a Patient-Initiated Follow-Up (PIFU) pathway to request a follow-up appointment via the NHS App, building on a pilot. A current focus is also improving how waiting list data is presented and communicated. The next steps are improving the experience of patients waiting for treatment and extending secondary care appointment management to users who manage health services for others.
NHS England says that NHS App users make more than six million repeat prescription requests every month, with usage of this service increasing by 38% since 2024.
Recently completed projects include extending the ability to view and track prescription statuses to 18.5% of pharmacies. In addition, ready-to-collect prescription notifications are now live with 104 pharmacies. NHS England is rolling out prescription status tracking and ready-to-collect notifications to more users and allowing users to see the full list of their repeat prescriptions.
The next priority will be helping users to set reminders to request repeat prescriptions and “understanding how the NHS App can be used as a front door to pharmacy services”.
Health records and messaging
NHS England says that NHS App users view their GP health record around 20 million times a month, including nine million views of test results. Usage has increased by more than 34% compared to 2024.
The current focus is on helping users to find information in their appointment notes and documents in the GP health record and supporting GP surgeries and systems to adopt GP Connect APIs. Next in the roadmap is helping users to view detailed test results and more easily interpret changes between consecutive results.
On messaging, NHS England reports that the notification opt-in rate has increased by 8% since the start of 2025, meaning that 88% of active users are opted in to push notifications for when they receive a new message.
Work is now underway to enable more messages to be sent through the NHS App and for digital letters from secondary care trusts to be viewed within the NHS App inbox.
Global Government Forum’s research study, A Fresh Mandate for Digital Leadership in the NHS, pinpoints four priority areas to enable the analogue to digital vision set out by the government: modernising funding, bolstering skills and capability; tackling fragmentation; and resetting the role of the digital centre.
It is based on interviews with chief digital and information officers in NHS trusts in England and was led by Andrew Besford, former deputy director at the Government Digital Service and non-executive director and chair of the digital committee at Gateshead Health NHS Foundation Trust.
Read the report now
Integrations and user experience
Many services in the NHS App are provided by integrating third-party services. Current work includes integrating more online consultation services and trialling AI-enabled triage across a larger area following a pilot.
Other updates in the roadmap include successfully reducing the average login time and launching prompts for users to enable login using their fingerprint, face or iris.
NHS England is working on “significant changes to navigation within the NHS App that will make it easier to find services” and improving NHS App help and support content.
Read more: We must drive the value out of digital investments, NHS chief Jim Mackey tells Newcastle conference
About Sarah Wray
Sarah has over 15 years’ experience as a journalist with a specialism in the public sector and topics such as digitalisation and climate action. Sarah was formerly the editor of Cities Today and Smart Cities World, as well as a specialist video-based publication in the aerospace sector. She has also written for publications including Smart Cities Dive, Mobile Europe, Mobile World Live and Computer Weekly.
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