NHS App Users in England Can Now Receive Prescription Ready Notifications on Smartwatches and Phones

NHS England has introduced a new feature allowing millions of NHS app users to receive push notifications on their smartphones and smartwatches when prescriptions are ready for collection. The service, which requires users to enable push alerts in the app settings, aims to reduce unnecessary calls and visits to pharmacies. The feature builds on the existing prescription tracking tool that has already been used by nearly 2.9 million people, with around one in three pharmacies in England currently participating in the service.

Millions of people using the NHS app in England are now able to receive notifications on their phones or smartwatches the moment a prescription becomes ready for collection. Frith, who holds the health innovation brief, put forward the technology as evidence that digital tools can take some of the friction out of patients' interactions with the NHS — reducing unnecessary calls in the process and freeing up pharmacy staff to focus more directly on the people in their care. Smartwatch and mobile alerts tied to prescription readiness could spare app users from unnecessary trips to the chemist and repeated manual checks, according to Rachel Power, chief executive of the Patients Association, who called this kind of functionality something patients have sought for some time, adding that it works best alongside non-digital routes so that people can access information in whichever way suits them — a view echoed in part by Henry Gregg, chief executive of the National Pharmacy Association, who noted that pharmacy staff stand to spend less time fielding telephone calls, and pointed out that a number of pharmacies have already put tracking tools or in-house apps into use toward that goal.

NHS App Users in England Can Now Receive Prescription Ready Notifications on Smartwatches and Phones

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NHS App Users in England Can Now Receive Prescription Ready Notifications on Smartwatches and Phones

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