Recovering Access to Primary Care

Paul Bristow Excerpts

Tuesday 9th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

There is funding in other parts of the Department’s budget, not least for tech innovation and the work we are doing on artificial intelligence. There is further scope to use AI in demand management, for example to relieve pressure on GPs by looking at changes in the behaviour of frail or elderly patients and picking up changes early. The use of AI presents a significant opportunity. There are questions about how we can use data better; indeed, there are challenges for those across the House in how we can use data better to manage pressure within primary care. So there is funding elsewhere in the Department’s budget, in addition to what I have announced here.

[Paul Bristow (Peterborough) (Con)]

I am pleased to inform the House that my mother has moved in with my wife and me, from the Secretary of State’s constituency. One of the joys of living with my mother is helping her with Tesco orders and Amazon deliveries and with surfing what she calls the interweb, and I am looking forward to helping her with the new NHS app. Does my right hon. Friend agree with me that enabling many more people to use the NHS app, including Mrs Bristow, and having many more services available on the NHS app is more convenient for patients and will free up GP time, so that GPs can do what they should be doing?

[Steve Barclay]

I am happy to recognise the scope for Mrs Bristow and many others to make more use of the NHS app. That app is all about empowering the patient and enabling them to get the right care, in the right place, at the right time, whether from a pharmacist, one of the additional primary care roles we are creating or a GP where applicable. The NHS app can free primary care practices from many of the tasks that are currently placed on them, such as people phoning for their records or repeat prescriptions. It is a key part of streamlining such tasks.