NHS Digital annual report and accounts 2020-21

Our 2020-21 Annual Report and Accounts describes a year in which we delivered NHS infrastructure and services to continue supporting the NHS' response to the pandemic. Here are some highlights from the report of our key achievements: 

Helping the public

• nearly 1 billion visits to the NHS website by people looking for information about COVID-19 - currently, there are more than 17 million visits every 4 weeks to COVID-19 pages
• 4.3m downloads of the NHS App with an additional 23.5 million downloads from 01 April 2021 to 30 January 2022
• 2.7 million people had an NHS login account with a verified identity by the end of 2021-22 - this is now 23.4 million people
• 19,000 people a day using NHS 111 online

Delivering new infrastructure and services

• supported the design, delivery and operation of the digital services underpinning COVID-19 testing - by March 2021, the platform had processed more than 110 million test results and we're now up to 444 million tests
• led delivery of the digital services for COVID-19 vaccinations, including designing and developing the patient-facing booking portal and creating the service’s integrated IT infrastructure; 30 million vaccinations had been processed by March 2021, and we've now reached 138 million jabs
• expanded and improved the Shielded Patients List, allowing vulnerable patients to get the support they needed

Enabling research through data

• collected 10 new datasets to support the pandemic response. Public-facing data dashboards provide vital information on the pandemic, in addition to private dashboards for health and policy professionals
• new Trusted Research Environments improved our service for researchers looking at COVID-19’s impact on cardiovascular patients and at cancer treatments
• NHS DigiTrials service supported vital COVID-19 research, including the RECOVERY and PRINCIPLE COVID-19 treatment trials
• the COVID-19 Vaccine Registry allowed more than 800,000 volunteers to sign up to take part in COVID-19 vaccine trials

Equipping clinicians

• 240,000 views per week of the Summary Care Record application by clinicians - that's now up to 288,000 views a week
• 60% more advice and guidance requests were made by GPs to hospital consultants through the NHS e-Referral Service
• developed the digital and data services underpinning COVID-19 Oximetry@home, which helps monitor patients with COVID-19 in their homes
• 5-fold increase in the frequency of releases of SNOMED CT clinical codes to the NHS

Providing reliable IT

• 30% increase in transactions on the NHS Spine
• achieved 99.96% average availability across all our live services
• established a new IT Operations Centre (ITOC) to ensure smooth running of COVID-19 digital infrastructure
• completed the migration to the Health and Social Care Network (HSCN)
• helped Nightingale Hospitals, vaccination and testing sites get connected and provided connectivity upgrades for 350 NHS sites to support COVID-19 response
• moved more than 2 million NHSmail accounts to Exchange Online without disruption, the largest migration of its type in the world