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 has 2 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

Drive efficiencies and reduce burden

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
reducing operational costs, for example replacing SMS with NHS App messages
helping users get to the right place, first time
designing NHS App services in a way that supports health system KPIs

The NHS App’s roadmap is focused on work that contributes towards these 2 objectives.

Health records

launched a new version of the GP health record that uses new GP Connect (patient facing) APIs
improved the indicator range bar on some test results, particularly those which fall outside the 'normal' range

adding graphs to more test types so that users can easily see trends over time
improving the presentation and usefulness of GP test results
improving error screens within the GP health record
supporting GP systems and GP surgeries to adopt GP Connect (patient facing) APIs

providing a blood pressure result summary and linking to the NHS website's blood pressure tool to help users understand these results

Appointments

increased the number of hospitals that allow users to view, amend or cancel their appointments in the NHS App to 102 acute trusts, 6 specialist trusts and 3 mental health trusts
increased the number of hospitals that can send messages to 57 trusts, questionnaires to 23 trusts and documents to 43 trusts
users can now see past hospital appointments as well as future ones
users can now see inpatient and day case hospital appointments
users can now access all of their documents and questionnaires associated with their hospital care in one place

improving GP appointment booking journeys; this includes online consultation services as well as the direct ‘first come, first served’ appointment booking journey
making it easy for users to add GP appointments to their device’s calendar application
rolling out the new design system to secondary care appointments, referrals and waiting lists
allowing patients on a Patient-Initiated Follow-Up (PIFU) pathway to request a follow-up appointment via the NHS App

onboarding more healthcare providers so that more people can view and manage more of their appointments across different care settings in the NHS App

Prescriptions

extended the ability to view and track prescription statuses to more pharmacies
improved the design of various screens and made them load faster
research on the value and feasibility of allowing users to nominate a distance-selling pharmacy, leading to a decision to not proceed with this feature

rolling out to more users the ability to view and track the status of their prescriptions
increasing awareness of the new prescription status tracking feature with content changes in the NHS App
helping users to set reminders to request repeat prescriptions, to support better medicines adherence and reduce usage of the emergency prescriptions service

show some users a prescription’s last issue date so that they know in advance when they will be able to make their next request
improve the guidance on error pages to better support users who encounter an error

Integrated services

Many services in the NHS App are provided by integrating third-party services commissioned by local NHS organisations, or services run by NHS England and making them available to users with single sign-on via NHS login. Find out more about how to integrate with the NHS App.

integrated the new Manage health service for someone else service which makes it easier for users to apply to act on someone else’s behalf at their GP surgery

improving the Make your organ donation decision journey, including an upgrade to the latest design system
making it easier to see the current GP a user is registered at and access the Register with a GP service to change their GP surgery
integrating additional third-party services – for more information see  partners and services currently integrating

integrating a new service that allows users to change their home address
integrating various third-party services. For more information see partners and services that plan to be integrated

Messaging

Sending messages via the NHS App avoids the cost of sending an SMS, is more secure and puts all NHS messages all in one place. That’s why we’re rolling NHS App messaging out to more healthcare service with more message types and giving users better tools to manage their messages and notifications.

integrated 4 new services (Engage Health Systems, Hero Health, Hippo Labs, PathEKS) allowing more NHS App users to receive more of their messages in the NHS App
improved the content of certain push notifications to make them more engaging for users and increase the read rate of messages
added a filter to make it easier for users to find specific messages in their inbox

enabling more messages to be sent through the NHS App by onboarding new services and adding new message types, including a pilot of community health messages
adding new ‘remove message’ and ‘flag message’ features to make it easier for users to find and manage messages in their inbox
working towards one unified inbox on the message hub, helping users to more easily find and refer back
iterating notification content to maximise engagement and increase message read rates
encouraging more users to opt in to push notifications so they are notified as soon as there is a message for them

improving the maintainability, quality, speed and reliability of the NHS App messaging service
increasing the number of messages that don’t fall back to letter by notifying users about unread NHS App messages by SMS
continuing to enable more primary care, secondary care and national services to send messages through the NHS App
continue to increase the number of users opted in to receive push notifications, and increase the read rate of messages in the NHS App

made the way in which the back button works more consistent across the NHS App

making it easier for people to find services they associate with an ‘Account’ section, such as personal details, identity management and settings
testing options to improve findability of key NHS App services, leading to greater usage and awareness of these services, fewer incomplete or abandoned journeys and increased user satisfaction
testing a new pattern for navigating to integrated services to improve task completion rates on those services
helping more users to log into the NHS App more quickly and reducing the number of one-time password text messages sent, by encouraging use of biometric login and helping users to manage their password
fixing various usability and accessibility issues on the login journey
improving error screens 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
researching the onboarding journey for new and returning NHS App users to identify pain points

moving the back button to make it easier to navigate within the NHS App
resolving an issue that causes users’ NHS App sessions to time out while they are using an integrated service

Platform and analytics

ensured that the NHS App works with the latest operating systems: iOS 18 and Android 15
updated the automated process used to validate users’ identity when registering for the NHS App
reduced monthly costs and increased performance of analytics database by migrating to new technology

improving our performance measurement and analytics setup so that we have an improved view of how the app is performing for users
migrating analytics data to the NHS Federated Data Platform

Improving the in-app feedback tool so that users can leave feedback that we then use to improve the NHS App

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

Last edited: 27 May 2025 4:15 pm