A new trial will see women with concerning lumps directly referred to a breast diagnostic clinic via 111 online on the NHS App, with the aim of supporting faster diagnosis, reducing stress and freeing up GP appointments.
The scheme will begin in November and will be localised to Somerset, with plans for evaluations before further roll-out is considered.
Health secretary Wes Streeting highlighted the trial during a speech at the Royal College of GPs’ conference, acknowledging frustrations around referral times and stating that where staff “give us examples of patient pathways that can be simplified through appropriate patient self-referral or direct referral by other NHS services to save your time, we will act”.
Dr Vin Diwakar, NHS medical director for transformation, comments that the pilot is “just the start” of plans to bring NHS services to patients using the app, speaking of the ambition to create a single patient record to enable clinicians to view full patient history, and to use NHS data to predict those most at risk of developing disease to enable preventative action.
Also on the NHS App
Back in August, HTN reported on a partnership between NHS England and libraries across England, designed to offer support to people using online health services.
Earlier in the year, we looked into the progress and strategy of the NHS App in 2024 along with hopes and plans for the future, highlighted during a discussion at this year’s Rewired.
Data sharing across the NHS
In September, Wes Streeting’s speech at the Labour Party Conference 2024 called for a tech- and data-driven reform of the NHS, citing advances in data and genomics which will lead to healthcare which is more predictive, more preventative, and “more personalised than ever before”, enabled by a universal health service that is “able to share data, partner with innovators, and adopt new technologies at scale”.
Data sharing plays a key role in South Yorkshire’s data and insights strategy for 2024-2026, which sets out ambitions to build an intelligence-led system using data to improve health and wellbeing outcomes and experiences, with focus on evaluating care pathways, improving population understanding and tackling health inequalities.
Similarly, the North West London Acute Provider Collaborative has published a strategy covering 2024-2027, outlining shared priorities and plans to implement a single EPR and offer partners access to “consistent information” across the collaborative.
