Millions more patients are expected to receive appointment reminders, test results and screening invitations through the NHS app, reducing the use of letters.
The NHS plans to send around 270 million messages this year, up from around 200 million in 2024. The move is backed by more than £50m in funding and is expected to save £200m over three years.
Push notifications will be used to help reduce missed appointments. About eight million elective appointments and 30% of screening appointments were missed in 2023/24.
Over the next three years, NHS messages will be sent through the app first, followed by SMS and then letters where digital communication is not available.
Despite ramping up online communication, the NHS said it will continue to support people who don’t have access to a smartphone or have specific communication needs.
Last year, 85 million vaccine messages were sent digitally and cancer screening programmes were expected to use the system.
Health and Social Care Secretary, Wes Streeting, said: ‘People are living increasingly busy lives and want to access information about their health at the touch of a button, rather than having to wait weeks for letters that often arrive too late.
‘This government is bringing our analogue health service into the digital age, so that being a patient in the NHS is as convenient as online banking or ordering a takeaway.
‘The NHS still spends hundreds of millions of pounds on stamps, printing, and envelopes. By modernising the health service, we can free up huge amounts of funding to reinvest in the frontline.
‘Through the investment and reform in our Plan for Change, we will make the NHS App the front door to the health service and put power in the hands of patients.’
Dr Vin Diwakar, Clinical Transformation Director at NHS England, recently said: ‘More than 11 million of us now log into the NHS App every month to manage our healthcare, whether ordering a repeat prescription or seeking advice on a medical condition.
‘We’re supporting the switch from analogue to digital by harnessing the power of digital communication channels so that millions more patients can receive important messages about their health direct to their smartphones – all you need to do is enable notifications in the NHS App to see and open messages.
‘The NHS App is already empowering patients by giving them more information and now by increasingly becoming a world-class way of communicating – which will save millions of pounds and free up resources for patient care. I’d encourage anyone who hasn’t got the app on their smartphone to download it now.’
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