NHS app will be ‘indispensable part of life', vows Keir Starmer
Putting a consumer revolution in health technology at the heart of Labour's pledge to rescue the NHS, the prime minister said the app would become 'an indispensable part of life for everyone'.
Every patient in the country has been promised a unified medical record on the app within three years, which will become a part of the 'national critical infrastructure' in Britain, according to Wes Streeting, the health secretary, writing in The Times.
• Wes Streeting: Patient records shake-up will improve our experience of the NHS
A ten-year plan for the NHS published on Thursday set out a vision of a 'neighbourhood health service' where far more services are available in local clinics, with health chiefs seeking to raise private finance to build dozens of new health centres.
The plan says the NHS is on 'an existential brink', on the path to failure and shrivelling into a 'poor service for poor people'.
After a £30 billion boost at the spending review, NHS staff are warned that the answer to the health service's problems 'cannot simply be more money, especially when more money is a fiscal fantasy'.
Condemning a system where extra cash has not improved results, the plan insists that only a radical reinvention of how the NHS works will save it, promising to rewire the allocation of a £200 billion NHS budget to pay organisations for better results, rather than care as usual.
The new NHS app will offer 24/7 health advice and will constitute the 'front door' to the health service, providing 'seamless access for health professionals to the right information no matter where they are', Streeting said. He said the single patient record, which would be available on the app, would remove the 'constant admin' and 'trauma' caused by patients having to repeat themselves at every appointment.
The single patient record, which will give each patient access to their medical data via an app, was a key suggestion from The Times Health Commission last year. It will be 'designed and treated' like a 'national critical infrastructure', the personal information it contains 'protected with the highest levels of security and robustly safeguarded', Streeting added.
Starmer told an audience of frontline staff in east London: 'Look at your phones, look at your apps — because what you see on that screen is that entire industries have reorganised around apps. Retail, transport, finance, weather — you name it. Why can't we do that with health?'
He said: 'We will transform the NHS app so it becomes an indispensable part of life for everyone. It will become, as technology develops, like having a doctor in your pocket, providing you with 24-hour advice, seven days a week.'
Starmer said services on the app would include 'booking appointments at your convenience, ordering your prescriptions, guiding you to local charities or businesses that can improve your wellbeing'.
This is promised from 2028, and the plan sets out far more ambitious goals of using the app to message staff involved in your care, offering video calls with consultants, AI advice on symptoms and personalised lifestyle advice and health coaching.
The app is also being adapted to show hospital league tables so patients can shop around for the shortest waits or best care, while allowing them to self-refer for services such as mental health therapy and podiatry without the need to see a GP. Personalised genetic risk scores that highlight propensity to certain diseases are also promised.
Smartwatches, glucose monitors and intelligent fabrics that monitor vital signs will also be able to feed data to the app for use in care and monitoring, the plan promises. Wearable devices will be given out free in poor areas with high health needs in an effort to prevent illness. 'Ambient AI' will summarise consultations to avoid the need for doctors to type up notes.
• Political Sketch: Rachel Reeves smiles 'appily through surreal NHS strategy launch
While the vision has been broadly welcomed across the health service, it has also attracted scepticism given the NHS dire record in large-scale IT programmes. Ministers say a £10 billion technology fund is part of the answer, stressing that Labour's fiscal rules mean that unlike in the past this cannot be raided to top up day-to-day budgets.
Kamila Hawthorne, of the Royal College of GPs, said: 'Major AI developments still feel a long way off when many GPs are reporting that their basic IT systems are slow, inefficient and can't communicate with one another.'
Sarah Woolnough, chief executive of the King's Fund think tank, added: 'There are more than 150 pages of a vision of how things could be different in the NHS by 2035, but nowhere near enough detail about how it will be implemented.'
Others criticised a lack of a plan for social care and a decision to strip out tougher-edged public health measures such as a ban on alcohol advertising. Plans for mandatory health warnings on bottles are included, however.
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