NHS England has published its latest roadmap for the future of the NHS App, highlighting aims to increase users’ ability to self-serve, support operational efficiency and costs, and to design the app to support health system performance indicators.
The roadmap covers health records, appointments, prescriptions, integrated services, messaging, design and navigation, and platform and analytics, noting what has been completed to date, what has been worked on, and what is next for the NHS App.
For appointment management, 102 acute trusts, 6 specialist trusts and 3 mental health trusts, allow users to amend and cancel appointments in the app. The roadmap states the app is currently working on “improving GP appointment booking journeys” including through online consultation services and a “first come, first served” system, with plans in place to introduce a new design system for secondary care appointments, referrals and waiting lists. Work is also being carried out on a Patient-Initiated Follow-Up (PIFU) pathway via the app.
When looking at prescriptions, the NHS App has reportedly “extended the ability to view and track prescription statuses to more pharmacies”, with improvements made to the design and loading speed. Key focus areas for ongoing improvements include increasing awareness of new prescription features, offering more guidance and support to patients when encountering errors and encouraging users to set reminders for requesting repeat prescriptions as a way to “support better medicines adherence and reduce usage of the emergency prescriptions service”.
For third parties, the roadmap highlights integrating additional third-party services, noting partners and services currently integrating.
On messaging, the roadmap outlines the integration of Engage Health Systems, Hero Health, Hippo Labs and PathEKS as a key achievement, enabling greater scope for messaging via the NHS App. The addition of an inbox filter and changes to the content in push notifications have also been noted, with attention now turning to onboarding other services and adding new features to help develop inbox management.
For health records, it notes the launch of a “new version of the GP health record” featuring GP Connect APIs. Next steps include adding more graphs for better visibility of trends over time, improving the presentation of test results and error screens, supporting GP systems and surgeries in adopting GP Connect and providing a summary of blood pressure results.
Finally, recent updates for platform and analytics include upgrading to the latest iOS and Android systems, improving the identity verification process and reducing monthly costs “by migrating to new technology”. Next steps are set to concentrate on moving analytics data to the NHS Federated Data Platform and enhancing the in-app feedback tool.
Read more on the NHS App roadmap to find out more.
NHS App updates: the wider trend
The Department of Health & Social recently opened a call for feedback on emerging ideas for change, as part of the Change NHS initiative launched in October 2024. Following more than 175,000 change idea submissions, the DHCS has a number of key questions on how to extend the use of the NHS App.
At Digital Health Rewired 2025, we attended a panel discussion on the question, ‘can the NHS App finally become the digital front door?’ Here, professor Joe Harrison, national director of NHS digital channels at NHS England and chief executive at Milton Keynes University Hospital NHS Foundation announced that the NHS App will be integrated with the EPR system, Epic as of this year, with plans to have all trusts connected to the app by 2026.
In February, NHS England awarded two new contracts to support the “delivery of large-scale public facing digital services”, for NHS.UK and the wider portfolio including the NHS App and Login. Technology consultancy company, BJSS Limited was awarded a three-year contract valued at £37.5m to support the development of the NHS.uk portfolio. While the second contract was awarded to IBM to continue their work on developing the NHS App, with the aim to “create a standard online way for people to access the NHS”.
