NHS App Roadmap

We are always working to improve the NHS App. Read about what’s been recently delivered, what we’re currently working on and what’s coming up next.

The NHS App's roadmap is focused on work that contributes towards these high level objectives:

Improve health outcomes

Support users to prevent, improve and manage ill health, for example by:

putting them in control of their own health and care, and the health and care of those they care for
increasing their skills, confidence, knowledge and capacity for self-advocacy
connecting them to health prevention services

Deliver productivity growth and cost savings

Free up time for frontline teams and reduce administrative overheads, for example by:

increasing users’ ability to self-serve, for example booking and managing appointments
supporting operational efficiency, for example reducing do not attends and unnecessary queries to GP surgeries
reducing operational costs, for example replacing SMS and letters with NHS App messages
helping users get to the right place, first time
designing NHS App services in a way that supports the priorities of the health system

This roadmap covers the work of the NHS App team. It does not cover all of the digital services mentioned in the 10 Year Health Plan for England or the Medium Term Planning Framework.

Triage, referrals and appointments

Each month, there are around 20 million views of secondary care appointment details, as well as 8.5 million visits to integrated services to manage those appointments, helping to avoid do-not-attends at hospitals.  

Additionally, more than 400,000 GP surgery appointments are booked or cancelled on the NHS App each month and there are around 3.5 million visits to online consultation services for people to ask their GP about a health problem.

We are now building on these foundations to support delivery of these priorities from the 10 Year Health Plan:

using AI-assisted triage models and data-driven pathways to guide people to the service they need quickly and provide those who need an appointment with the ability to book one

putting patients in control of their treatment pathways by giving them one place to manage all their appointments, referrals and interactions while bringing efficiencies that reduce referral-to-treatment times

see a list of all integrated online consultation and Patient Care Aggregator services currently live in the NHS App
improved error screens in secondary care appointment management journeys

trialling AI-assisted triage across London 
exploring ways to scale AI-assisted triage across the whole of England
allowing more patients on a patient-initiated follow-up (PIFU) pathway to request a follow up appointment via the NHS App
providing clear information about the type of appointment (for example in-person or phone call) so that patients can prepare appropriately and avoid unnecessary travel
enabling an invite-to-book model that lets patients choose from available appointment slots, reducing inconvenient bookings and the need to reschedule
extending secondary care appointment management to users who manage health services for others
improving the referrals screen to give users greater transparency on the referrals process and more reliable referral status information
simplifying navigation to a user’s best GP appointment booking option whether that’s through an online request or directly booking appointments
investigating a new way for accessing GP appointments that works alongside AI-assisted triage

enabling users whose GPs use systems based on GP Connect (patient facing) APIs to view and cancel GP appointments
improving the experience of patients waiting for treatment 
improving error messages in the GP appointment booking journey

Prescriptions and medicines

Every month, NHS App users make around 7 million repeat prescription requests. Usage of this service is increasing over 25% year-on-year. Each request made digitally saves 3 minutes of GP surgery time compared to analogue methods.  

all users can now see the full list of their repeat prescriptions, including those that are currently unavailable to request 
extended the ability to view and track prescription statuses to 30% of pharmacies
ready-to-collect prescription notifications are now live with 16% of pharmacies, helping patients to collect their medicines sooner

rolling out prescription status viewing and tracking to more users
rolling out ready-to-collect prescription notifications to more users
helping users to set reminders to request repeat prescriptions, to support better medicines adherence and reduce usage of the emergency prescriptions service 
enabling prescription order tracking for users who manage health services for others aged 10 or less
updating prescription screens to the latest version of the NHS App design system to keep it consistent and reduce maintenance overheads

supporting the ‘only order what you need’ initiative to help reduce medicines waste

Health records

Every month, NHS App users view their GP health record more than 35 million times, including 12 million views of test results. This allows users to access their health information more quickly and reduces the number of requests for information going to GP surgeries.

see a list of all integrated health record services currently live in the NHS App
updated all test results and appointment notes screens to the latest version of the NHS App design system, to keep it consistent and reduce maintenance overheads
improved the layout of the appointment notes screen to make it easier to read and as a foundation for future improvements
helping users to view detailed test results and more easily interpret changes between consecutive results

helping users to find specific information in the appointment notes part of their GP health record  
improving the layout of the documents screen to make it easier to read and as a foundation for future improvements
exploring how to combine test results from different sources into a single view

allowing users to download or share their GP health record

Notifications and messaging

Sending messages via the NHS App means that patients can access all of their messages in one  place, and avoids the cost of sending a letter or SMS.   

To support digital-first messaging, we’re working with NHS Notify to increase the number of messages that are read in the NHS App.

see a list of all notifications and messaging and NHS Notify integrations live in the NHS App
increased the notification opt-in rate across all users from 54% to 61% over the last 12 months; currently, 88% of active users (13 million people) are opted in to push notifications so are notified when they receive a new message
enabled digital letters from secondary care trusts to be viewed within the NHS App inbox (we expect the first trust to start using this capability soon)

working towards a single inbox for all messages, helping users to find messages more easily 
allowing users to give feedback about the quality of messages they receive in the NHS App
exploring the use of push notifications and other alerts for uses other than messaging, such as when a new test result is available

continuing to enable more NHS services to send messages through the NHS App  
continuing to increase the number of users opted in to receive push notifications, and increasing how many NHS App messages are read quickly
understanding how messaging and notifications should work for users who manage health services for other people  
testing a version of the inbox built using native iOS and Android code and native design conventions to understand the benefits of this approach

made significant changes to navigation across the NHS App that is making it faster and easier for users to find the services they need 
updated NHS App help and support content so that users can get answers to common problems more quickly

improving the stability of the native shell (the technical foundations of the NHS App) to reduce timeout issues and login or session failures
testing a version of the NHS App built using native code and native design conventions to understand the benefits of this approach
resolving an issue that causes users’ NHS App sessions to time out  
testing a new pattern for navigating to integrated services (such as local online consultations) to increase the number of people completing tasks on those services  
exploring additional ways to personalise navigation in the NHS App
improving error screens and other endpoints to give users clearer guidance about what they can do when they encounter them, and reduce the volume of support requests sent to our helpdesk

encouraging more users to verify their identity so that they can access more services in the NHS App
exploring the feasibility and viability of a separate system to manage content, enabling us to change content more quickly and easily

launched a new screen that shows users the home address on their NHS records
integrated a new service that allows users to change their home address (initially for a small number of GP surgeries but this will increase) 
fixed an issue on Apple iOS that caused some users with biometric login switched on to be incorrectly taken to the manual login screen
see a list of all integrated services currently live in the NHS App

supporting the use of password managers and passkeys on Apple iOS devices to help users log into the NHS App quicker and easier, and reduce the number of one-time passcode text messages sent
investigating options to further reduce the average time taken to sign in to the NHS App and reduce usage of one time passcode text messages 
making it easier for users to switch profiles and manage services for someone else
enabling users to see and control who is able to manage services on their behalf in the NHS App
enabling linked profiles for users whose GPs use systems based on GP Connect (patient facing) APIs so they can manage health services for others

Platform and operations

improved the NHS App contact us form to collect information that helps our customer support team to resolve issues more quickly 
migrated to a new customer service platform

changing the web analytics service used by the NHS App
improving the security of our infrastructure to ensure the NHS App is able to run safely and securely   
improving app performance and stability, reducing development time and infrastructure costs  
giving customer support teams better documentation to use during issue resolution 
improving the new NHS App contact us form to support faster resolution of user issues 
creating a separate NHS App contact us form for staff at NHS organisations to use

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.

See Chapter 3 of the 10 Year Health Plan to understand the longer-term direction of the NHS App.

See our promotional toolkit, designed to help you tell people, including your patients, about the NHS App.

See NHS App Management Information for published information about the number of users and usage for the NHS App, and for features that are available through the NHS App.

Last edited: 22 July 2026 5:24 pm