‘Amazon-style’ prescription tracking goes live in NHS App
The service is expected to be made available to nearly 5,000 more pharmacies over the next 12 months – covering 60 per cent of those in England.
Dr Vin Diwakar is Clinical Transformation Director at NHS England.
Diwakar said: “We know that people want more control over how they manage their healthcare and the new prescription tracking feature in the NHS App offers exactly that.
“You will now get a near real-time update in the app that lets you know when your medicine is ready so you can avoid unnecessary trips or leaving it until the last minute to collect.
“The new Amazon-style feature will also help to tackle the administrative burden on pharmacists, so that they can spend more of their time providing health services and advice to patients rather than updates on the status of their prescriptions.”
The rollout follows plans for millions of patients to receive a cost-of-living boost as the government froze prescription charges.
Latest data shows the NHS App now has 37.4 million registered users with an average of 11.4 million people logging in each month to manage their healthcare.
The new prescription tracker builds on another app feature which allows people without a nominated pharmacy to use a barcode to collect their prescription – with an average of 2.1 million views of digital prescription barcodes each month.
Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Wes Streeting, said:”If patients can track the journey of their food shop, they should be able to do the same with their prescriptions.
“By harnessing the power and efficiency of modern tech, we’re saving patients time, driving productivity and freeing up hardworking pharmacists to do what they do best – helping patients, not providing status updates.”
