Patients will be able to access more information about their healthcare via the NHS App under changes coming in the 10-year plan, health secretary Wes Streeting has said.
Two new features of the NHS App are to be enabled, including a feature called My Companion, which will give patients access to trusted health information.
This feature will also support patients to ask questions about their health conditions and, including any they have felt too embarrassed to raise in a face-to-face appointment, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said.
The second feature, called My Choices, will help patients find their nearest pharmacy or the best rated providers for heart, hip or knee surgery.
Mr Streeting, said: ‘The NHS feels increasingly slow and outdated to the generation that organises their lives at the touch of a button. If you get annoyed at Deliveroo not getting your dinner to you in less than an hour, how will you feel being told to wait a year for a knee operation? A failure to modernise risks this generation walking away from the NHS, first for their healthcare, and then with their taxes.
‘People won’t accept paying higher and higher taxes to fund a health service that no longer meets their needs. And the lack of control people feel over their own lives is made worse by an analogue, ‘computer says no’, NHS. We can only close this inequality and shut down this risk to the NHS’s future, through a revolution in patient power.’
He added that the ambition of the 10-year plan was ‘nothing less than to provide NHS patients with the same ease and convenience that’s afforded to private patients’.
‘The good news is that technology gives us the opportunity to democratise healthcare in a way never before possible. It can empower patients with choice and control and make managing our healthcare as convenient as doing our shopping or banking online,’ he said.
‘Technology can be the great leveller. Look at what Martin Lewis, the Money Saving Expert, has done for personal finances. For ordinary people – who could never afford their own financial adviser – it is simple and easy to make your hard-earned money go further. Our 10 year plan for health will do the same for NHS patients – giving them easy access to information, to help them improve their health.’
Earlier this month it was announced that all ‘appropriate’ messages were to be sent via the NHS App within three years.
The 10-year plan is also going to review GP funding allocations as a way to tackle health inequalities, and enable patients to access clinical trials through the app.
