Kit Lewis, Associate Partner and NHS App Delivery Lead, and Dr. Angela Spatharou, EMEA Healthcare & Lifesciences Industry Lead, IBM Consulting

The NHS is accelerating one of the most significant digital transformations in its history, with the NHS App at the forefront. With more than 40 million registered accounts and processing more than 27 million messages per month, it has become the country’s digital front door to health and care. What once required long phone waits or reliance on GP opening hours can now be done in minutes — from booking appointments and ordering prescriptions to managing referrals and accessing health information around the clock.

This shift which forms a core pillar of the Government’s long-term digital strategy, is transforming how citizens engage with the health service, improving access and easing pressure on frontline staff .

The NHS App sits at the core of the wider digital AI transformation agenda, critical to the longevity of the NHS, focused on transforming patient experience, reducing administrative burden and building more sustainable services. Within this national strategy, IBM’s role is to help NHS England deliver secure, reliable and user centred technology at scale, ensuring the app continues to become a key part of the country’s health system.

Poised for ambitious expansion

The NHS App has grown rapidly in terms of both reach and effectiveness. It now serves millions of registered users, including 14 million monthly active users - a 24% increase since March 2025.

The next phase intends to see the transformation of the NHS App into a unified “health companion,” giving people access to their full lifelong health record, smart triage (intelligent navigation), integrated wearables and clearer pathways into care. Supported by AI-enabled personalisation, the app empowers patients to engage more proactively with their care, within their context (e.g. community, culture, language), reducing barriers to action. This AI-enabled transformation of how people interact with the NHS aims to fundamentally reshape the way patients access care end-to-end. In addition, these capabilities will help NHS England to deliver major commitments of the 10 Year Health Plan including:

• Unified access: appointments available through the NHS App after intelligent AI navigation, helping patients reach the right care more quickly and ensuring people access the right setting of care for their needs, at the right time, thus reducing waste and duplication.
• Transforming Planned Care – putting patients in control of their treatment pathways by giving them one place to manage all their appointments, referrals and interactions – while bringing efficiencies that reduce referral-to-treatment times.
• Prevention and selfcare: Wearables and biometric sensors providing personalised insights to support proactive health management.
• Digital communications: Full transition to direct to patient digital communications, with patient initiated follow up offering greater control over care pathways.

Rahul Kalia, Managing Partner, IBM Consulting UK & Ireland: “Digitising the NHS is a long‑term commitment for creating a more accessible, efficient and sustainable health service. IBM is proud to be supporting the NHS in improving patient experience at scale by transforming the NHS App to deliver personalised, proactive care for health service users.”

As the NHS App moves into its next phase, it will not only modernise how people access care but also strengthen the system behind it, supporting clinical teams, improving operational resilience and helping the NHS deliver the level of service the public increasingly expects. This progress will be underpinned by a trusted ecosystem of healthcare and technology partners, working together to enable safe integration and drive the innovation needed to shape the NHS of the future.

Kit Lewis, Associate Partner and NHS App Delivery lead, IBM Consulting

Dr. Angela Spatharou, EMEA Healthcare & Lifesciences Industry Lead, IBM Consulting