Future developments for the NHS App

We are continuing to improve the NHS App. Read about our objectives and the items we have just delivered, what we are currently working on and what’s coming up next.

The overall objectives for NHS App in 2023/24 are:

Maximise value from the NHS App by increasing self service and self care to reduce demand on the front line.
Continue developing our appointments, record access and prescriptions capabilities to keep up with policy and emerging user needs.
Continue to develop the design and navigation of our services to address user needs.
Continue to enhance the messaging capability to improve the experience for senders and recipients.
Ensure we understand enough about all our users’ behaviours and the full capability of the channel to help them to complete usable end to end journeys.
Extend the integrated services available in the NHS App to support localisation and better meet users’ healthcare needs.
Extend the underlying capabilities of the NHS App platform with a view to providing the platform capabilities for our future ambitions.

Appointments, records access and prescriptions

This product group covers patient data integrations around appointments, records access and prescriptions.

The objective for this product is to continue to develop our core services and capabilities to keep up with policy and emerging user needs. This ensures we understand enough about our users to target user-centred enhancements.

These are the specific things our teams are working on:

added supporting content to test results to help users understand them better
added test result history to help some users managing long-term conditions to understand trends in their test results
increased the number of hospitals that allow users to view, amend or cancel their appointments in the NHS App to 67 trusts
increased the number of hospitals that can send messages to 16 trusts, and questionnaires and documents to 18 trusts
trialled a new feature showing users how long they may need to wait for hospital treatment in preparation for a national rollout
piloted a new feature enabling users to view confirmed acute prescriptions as well as repeat prescriptions in preparation for a national rollout
created a token to enable users to collect their prescriptions from any pharmacy in England, and made this available in certain areas of the country ahead of a national rollout
made it easier to find the 111 emergency prescriptions service

adding range indicators for some test results so that users can more easily understand whether their result is inside or outside the usual range
exploring how we can make clinician comments on test results easier to understand
understanding how we can give more users access to their secondary care test results
increasing the number of hospitals that can surface users’ appointments in the App
allowing users to see their past hospital appointments as well as future ones
allowing more users to see how long they may need to wait for hospital treatment
rolling out to all users the ability to view confirmed acute prescriptions as well as repeat prescriptions
rolling out to all users who do not have a nominated pharmacy a token to collect their prescriptions from any pharmacy in England
exploring the use of the Electronic Prescription Service’s tracking statuses to give users additional tracking information for their prescription order
improving the way that primary care data is sent to the app, to enable a richer, more user-centred experience - this work is often referred to as GP Connect (patient facing) APIs
exploring the feasibility of integrating some care plans into the NHS App to allow users to view and manage their care plans

giving more users access to test results for tests taken in hospitals
exploring how we might show users their primary and secondary care test results into one place
notifying users when they have a new test result in the NHS App
helping users to access and manage documents and questionnaires associated with their hospital care
linking related secondary care appointments so that users can understand their care pathway
making GP appointment journeys available using the Booking and Referral Standard (BaRS) for new GP clinical systems in England

Navigation and design

This product group provides cross-cutting design and navigation improvements to the core product.

The objective for this work is to continue to develop the design and navigation of our services to address user needs. This ensures we understand enough about all of our users’ behaviours and the full capability of the channel to help them to complete usable end to end journeys.

These are the specific things our teams are working on:

updated the information architecture to make it easier to navigate within the NHS App
updated the design of the NHS App homepage and other top-level screens to make them simpler and more intuitive
added a link to the nhs.uk Medicines A-Z from relevant places in the NHS App
integrated the Virtually online consultation service to allow users to interact with their GPs through the NHS App
integrated the Better Universal Care Plan service to enable users in London to access care plans within the NHS App

rolling out the new design to more screens in the NHS App
enhancing components in the new design such as the campaign card on the homescreen and the back button
reviewing error screens to understand how we can improve them
exploring opportunities to make use of native smartphone capabilities, such as calendars and maps , to improve user experience
exploring the design and strategy needed to deliver digital therapeutics through the national digital channels, focusing on musculoskeletal conditions
integrating more third-party online consultation services (Doctrin, MyGP Triage, SystmConnect and V-Consult) to allow users to interact with their GPs through the NHS App
improving the visibility of which GP services are available to which users
helping users to understand third party integrations by improving the design pattern s used when passing users into third-party services that are integrated into the NHS App
integrating the new Digital NHS Health Check service so that users in the pilot can access this through the NHS App
removing the COVID Pass service from the NHS App

rolling out the new design to more screens in the NHS App
updating existing users about new app features to ensure they are aware of new functionality that may be useful to them

Messaging

This product provides a messaging inbox for all messages sent through the NHS App and on-device push notifications for new messages to all users who’ve opted to receive those.

The objective for this product is to continue to enhance the messaging capability to improve the experience for senders and recipients.

These are the specific things our teams are working on:

rolled out keyword reply functionality to a small number of GP practices to increase the types of message that can be sent in the NHS App
made it quicker for users to navigate from a push notification into their message

increasing the read rate of NHS App messages
increasing the number of users who have opted into push notifications
rolling out keyword reply functionality to more GP practices to increase the types of message that can be sent in the NHS App
enabling more trusts to send secondary care appointment communications
redesigning the message inbox so that users can navigate to specific messages more quickly
allowing users to filter messages in their inbox to make it easier for users to find and manage their messages
improving push notifications to make them more engaging for users
improving messaging design and infrastructure to respond to new message types and volumes
improving the efficiency of onboarding for messaging partners
enabling more health and care providers to send messages and notifications via the NHS App messaging service

unifying messaging within the NHS App to create a more coherent user experience and improve users’ ability to find the relevant messages
exploring more inbox management style functionality to further support users in finding and organising their messages
exploring the use of push notifications to alert users when they have a new test result

Platform and analytics

This product group covers service integration capabilities, the code base, technical infrastructure and analytics.

The objective for this product group is to extend the underlying capabilities of the app platform with a view to providing the platform capabilities for our future ambitions. This includes advancing user insights, maintaining high levels of service performance and building improved ways for services to integrate with the NHS App.

These are the specific things our teams are working on:

added a new method for handling APIs with a new middleware layer to support the digital prescription integration

improving performance of our analytics database to make it quicker and easier to run reports
helping to implement cross-domain tracking to get a better view of user journeys that cross nhs.uk, NHS login and the NHS App
upgrading to the latest versions of the Personal Demographics Service (PDS) application programming interfaces (APIs) to improve our speed of delivery and enable enhancement to core features with PDS data
improving our supplier onboarding processes to reduce effort and increase speed, while maintaining usability and accessibility standards of integrated services
improving our performance measurement and analysis setup so that we have an improved view of how the app is performing for users
improving the in-app feedback tool so that users can leave feedback that we then use to improve the NHS App
exploring the use of A/B testing on the NHS App to allow us to quickly experiment with different designs and experiences
investigating how we can implement A/B testing to allow us to conduct experiments with content and NHS App features

implementing A/B testing to allow us to conduct experiments with content and NHS App features
implementing new supplier onboarding process improvements, including a new supplier management team to manage relationships with suppliers of integrated services that we work with

Latest releases

For details of our latest releases, please see our release notes.

Further information

See the NHS App features for details of what people can do now in the NHS App,

Last edited: 29 January 2024 10:42 am