NHS app has helped save over £1 million in text costs

The NHS App has helped to save the NHS over £1 million through the use of automatic notifications, according to new data from NHS England.

In the past year the app has sent more than 22.5 million messages which would have previously been sent as a text message or letter that costs around 5p. It is also more secure, and puts all patient NHS messages in one place.

The messaging services available in the NHS App depends on a patient’s GP surgery or healthcare provider, but many users can now:

• view messages from their NHS healthcare services (through the NHS App Messaging service)
• view responses from their GP practice or follow up on things like test results (sometimes called an online consultation)
• view messages to their healthcare provider (such as specialist doctors at a hospital)

Dr Vin Diwakar, National Transformation Director at NHS England said: “When we talk about the benefits of the NHS App, we usually focus on patient convenience, or the admin time saved for frontline staff – but the NHS App is also saving the NHS significant amounts of money on text messages and postal stamps, and these savings will only get larger as more features are added to the app in the future.

“By encouraging more people to use the NHS App, with notifications switched on, we can really start to reduce the estimated £450 million per year that is currently spent on communicating with patients.”

Three quarters of population using NHS app

The NHS App now has more than 34 million registered users, which is around three quarters of the adult population in England. Monthly logins rose by 69% in the last year from 18.7 million in March 2023 to 31.5 million in March 2024.

New features are being added to the NHS App regularly as the NHS encourages more people to use the app in their everyday lives.

These features enable patients to view their GP health record, order repeat prescriptions, view or manage hospital appointments, nominate their preferred pharmacy, find local NHS services and get health advice via 111 online.

Patients waiting for an elective hospital treatment will also now be able to see the average waiting time for their procedure at their local trust, and users without a nominated pharmacy will be able to use a barcode in the app to collect their prescription from any pharmacy instead of needing a paper version.