Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to help increase use of the NHS app.

The National Health Service is taking a coordinated approach to increase NHS App use by supporting frontline promotion, and is addressing barriers particularly in deprived communities. Although 29% of people over 13 years old in England access the NHS App every month and over 52% did so in the last year, this is not evenly distributed across all places and communities.

To address this, new funding and plans have been put in place following the Spending Review and publication of the NHS Medium Term Planning Framework. This includes setting clear national and local adoption targets for national delivery teams, regions, and providers, investing in training and local delivery support, and working with community partners and regional networks to help people who face digital exclusion.

Improved data, insights, and governance are being used to identify effective approaches and scale them nationally, ensuring more consistent benefits from digital access for patients. A few examples of local level adoption support include growing the 3,000 strong App Ambassadors across National Health Service organisations, expanding the Public Libraries Partnership that is currently in place across 1,400 sites, and establishing a new partnership with the 15 health innovation networks to support delivery of targeted NHS App adoption plans within each local area.