NHS app


The NHS App allows patients using the National Health Service in England to book appointments with their GP, order repeat prescriptions and access their GP record. Available since late 2018, the app was developed by NHS Digital and NHS England. Both Jeremy Hunt and Matt Hancock have stressed their support for the project. Hancock presented it as the key a radical overhaul of NHS technology. Hunt claimed it would mark 'the death-knell of the 8am scramble for GP appointments that infuriates so many patients'.
It can also be used to access NHS 111, set patients' data sharing preferences, record organ donation preferences and end of life care preferences. All GPs in England will be required to connect to it.

Development

Jeremy Hunt laid down eight "challenges" for the development in September 2017:
The app was piloted from October 2018 and plans were to roll it out across England in December 2018. Patients are to be sent a text message from their GP practice inviting them to download the app. It was released for testing in September 2018 in Liverpool, Staffordshire, Redditch and Bromsgrove, Wyre Forest and South Worcestershire, Wolverhampton, Hastings and Rother, and Bristol, North Somerset and Gloucestershire. Initially it would offer symptom checking and triage; appointment booking; repeat prescription ordering; access to patient records; national data opt-out; and organ donation preference. The launch of the app was accompanied by a decision that the name NHS Choices was to be abandoned, and in future the NHS site was to be called "the NHS website". In November 2018 it was reported that although it would be publicly available in the App Store and Google Play store, as well as a desktop webpage by the end of December, it would be made operational to patients "one STP or one CCG at a time", a process which was expected to take several months.
From 2019 it was planned to support GP video consultations and connect to an Apple Watch or FitBit. Later development includes plans to link up with the NHS e-Referral Service to allow patients to book hospital or clinic appointments. EMIS is at present the only patient record system that is fully compatible with the app.
In January 2019 it was available for downloading, but according to NHS England GP practices will need to 'review some of their system settings before they can go live'. It was intended to be fully operational by 1 July 2019. The app uses the NHS login to verify the identity of users.
After the establishment in early 2019 of NHSX as a central IT department for the NHS, chief executive Matthew Gould stated that the app should not have any more features, but should be a platform allowing "other people innovate on top of it".
In 2020, facial recognition has been added as a way to log in to the NHS app. To take advantage of the feature, users need to submit a photo from an official document like a passport or a driving license.
The app's developers said that it could also be used for Covid-19 "immunity passports" providing documented proof of users' immunity due to a past infection. The idea has proved controversial.