Modernised NHS app could lead to better and faster care for patients

“Younger” and “fitter” people could be directed to pharmacy care using the NHS app, leaving GPs to devote their “valuable” time in-person to sicker and older patients, the Health Secretary has suggested. Wes Streeting has said a modernised version of the health service’s phone app could mean the NHS could “do a much better and faster job of making sure patients get the right care at the right time in the right place”. The comments come as a 10-year plan for the health service is being developed as ministers look to overhaul and reshape the NHS.

Speaking to the i newspaper, Mr Streeting said that if the health service’s app could be modernised, there could be “better and faster” care for patients. He said: “If you are someone who tends to be younger, fitter, healthier, you probably won’t need to see the same GP every time you are going in for something.” Mr Streeting told the paper that if there is a time when patients can be directed to a pharmacist for advice or tests without seeing a doctor, “that then sorts you out without having to your GP”.

“That frees up GPs’ valuable time to provide that really strong family doctor relationship that will certainly be far more valued by people with ongoing health conditions or people in older age who have got multiple conditions they are contending with,” he added. Staff and patients have been consulted as the Government is drawing up a 10-year-plan for the NHS, expected to be published in the coming months. Technology is likely to feature in the proposals and in October ministers announced plans for a “single patient record” of health information, test results and letters in one place through the NHS app.

In March, it was announced that NHS England would be abolished and the service would be brought into the control of ministers. The changes marked a reversal of a 2012 shake-up of the NHS under the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, which the Government said created “burdensome” layers of bureaucracy without any clear lines of accountability..