Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they gave any consideration to the potential development of an NHS app to provide the service that has now been contracted to Amazon to share health data from the NHS.

There is already an app, called the NHS App, which provides the same information as the National Health Service website on a range of conditions, their symptoms and their treatments.

More modes to access medically verified NHS information will give United Kingdom citizens a better understanding of different medical conditions. The agreement with Amazon is convenient for those who rely on voice-activated technology, in particular blind and visually impaired people.

This is a mutually beneficial collaboration that will enable greater numbers of people to access information accredited by the NHS, helping to put people in control of their own healthcare. The information being provided to users of Alexa devices asking questions is already freely available through the NHS website. This is an alternative mechanism for delivering that information. Patients already use Alexa and other devices to search for information on a range of health issues. This agreement ensures that the information they receive from Alexa is medically verified by the NHS instead of from a range of other sources, such as non-UK websites.