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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.

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

  1. Maximise value from the NHS App by increasing self service and self care to reduce demand on the front line.  
  2. Continue developing our appointments, record access and prescriptions capabilities to keep up with policy and emerging user needs.  
  3. Continue to develop the design and navigation of our services to address user needs.  
  4. Continue to enhance the messaging capability to improve the experience for senders and recipients. 
  5. 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. 
  6. Extend the integrated services available in the NHS App to support localisation and better meet users’ healthcare needs.  
  7. 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. Ensure we understand enough about our users to target user-centred enhancements. 

These are the specific things our teams are working on:

Recently completed
  • Integrated the National Booking Service so that people can easily book their Spring COVID vaccine booster using the app.
  • Self-asserted blood pressure test results discovery, to understand what is needed to build a service that works for patients and practices.
Working on now
  • Improve 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 patient-facing APIs.
  • Improve test results to allow patients to easily access and understand test results.
  • Digitally requesting proxy access for adult to adults with capacity (private beta). 
  • Digital Prescription Token discovery and scoping an online prescription ordering service for users without a nominated pharmacy. 
  • Integrating care plans to increase the number of patients with a real-time view of their care plan and make them easier to manage (initially working with OneLondon).
  • Upgrade to the latest versions of the Personal Demographics Service (PDS) application programming interfaces (APIs) to improve our delivery velocity and enable enhancing core features with PDS data.
  • Allow people to easily find and register with a GP within the app. 
  • Extend hospital appointment supplier integrations to give more patients access to improved secondary care appointment information. 
Working on next
  • Prescription order updates to users with repeat prescriptions. 
  • Updated record viewing and appointment management journeys using new GP Patient Facing APIs. 
  • Digitally requesting proxy access for adult with parental responsibility to child (private beta).    
  • Medicines A-Z from NHS App to give people easier access to information about their medications.
  • Book and manage flu vaccinations via the app. 
  • Improve hospital appointment supplier integrations to give more patients access to improved more secondary care appointment features. 
  • Enable people to update their postal address through the NHS App. 
Recently completed
  • Access to Be Part of Research, so people can sign up for clinical research. 
  • Welcome carousel for new users, to make people aware of the services they can use in the app. 
  • PATCHS online consultation provider, to allow more patients to access help from their practice in the app. 
Working on now
  • Exploring integrating 111 Online, to give users the advantages from a 'logged-in' experience and facilitate follow-on actions. 
  • Enhance the information architecture and design to make the app simpler and more intuitive now and when new features arrive. 
  • Extend online consultation integrations so patients get the right appointment for their needs, and reduce burden on front-line practices (Klinik, Virtually and iPlato). 
Working on next
  • Design system improvements that join up the experience across journeys and update the general design of the App. 
  • Improve session management to provide a better experience when returning to the app from an integrated service. 
  • Help people understand third party integrations by improving the interruption card design pattern. 
  • Updating existing users about new app features to ensure they are aware of new functionality that may be useful to them. 

NHS App 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:

Recently completed
  • Added an unread message indicator so people don’t miss key notifications or messages.
  • iPlato messaging integration to increase the number of practices who can send messages through the app. 
Working on now
  • Free text replies, to increase the types of message that can be sent by practices in the app. 
  • Starting to send secondary care appointment communications.  
  • Extending GP messaging functionality, delivery guarantees and partner roll out to increase messages to users through the app.  
  • Improving inbox management to make it easier for users to find and manage their messages.
  • Improve messaging design and infrastructure performance to respond to new message types and volumes. 
  • Simplify NHS App integrations with national services and other senders. 
Working on next
  • Creating a unified inbox to create a coherent user experience and improve users’ ability to find the relevant messages. 
  • Improving the efficiency of onboarding for messaging partners. 
  • Notifications relating to GP registration. 
  • Offering users communications about their covid vaccine appointment confirmations and reminders. 

NHS App 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:

Recently completed
  • Third party technical review of the app.
  • Integration in-a-box to make it easier for suppliers to plan their integrations into the NHS App.
Working on now
  • Single digital onboarding process to reduce effort and increase speed, while maintaining useability and accessibility standards. 
  • Improvements to pre-onboarding process for suppliers to simplify the initial notification and information gathering phase of onboarding.
  • Decommission isolation note service infrastructure. 
  • Upgrade authentication standard to FIDO2 to maintain high data security standards. 
  • Improving how we record and manage analytics so that we have an improve, single view of how the app is performing for users.
  • Measurement of web integrations at scale so that we can understand user outcomes from third party services. 
  • Discovery into separating the codebase for the downloadable NHS App and the website version available on nhs.uk, so that we can offer the best user experience, whichever platform is being used.
Working on next
  • Improving use of analytics, including third party integration data, to drive strategic change to the NHS App. 
  • A/B testing discovery to investigate whether and how live testing of variants could be implemented. 
  • Investigate whether user experience and outcomes could be improved by storing data on the user's device.
  • Discovery into having a different code base for iOS and Android to improve user experience and delivery capabilities.

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: 11 April 2023 2:10 pm