Streeting sets out digital overhaul of NHS centred on ‘doctor in your pocket’ app | Health policy

Wes Streting has put the future of NHS on a digital overhaul in which an enhanced NHS application and new hospital league tables are intended to give patients unprecedented control over their care.

A spectacular expansion of the role of the NHS application will lead to fewer staff than expected by 2035, with the Street Bank on digital efficiency to reduce the number of front -line workers, a decision described as a “broad bet” by health experts.

The digital tool will allow patients to self-refer when they need help, make appointments with clinicians, receive advice from AI GP or see their medical records.

“The NHS application will become a doctor in your pocket, bringing our health service to the 21st century,” said the secretary of health by launching the government’s very tracing health plan.

Stressing that those who use private health care already receive instant advice, remote consultations with a doctor and a choice for their appointments, he promised that “our reforms will bring these services to each patient, whatever their ability to pay”.

The plan is intended to transform the NHS into England into a service more focused on patients who keep people in healthier and out of the hospital by providing care faster, digitally and near their homes.

However, while the experts welcomed the ambitions of the plan, they warned that the shortages of staff, the fragile finances of the NHS and the fact of not defining how the delivery of its many objectives would have raised serious doubts as to the speed with which the changes would be implemented.

Sarah Woolnough, Director General of King’s Fund, said: “Make significant progress to combat hospital waiting lists while deploying the objective of the health service to prevent and better manage more care in the community is a major challenge.”

The NHS will have a smaller workforce at the end of the 10-year period, because the ministers are so confident that digital care will have become commonplace.

Woolnough said: “The government places a big bet on technology and automation by releasing enough clinician time so that less leading personnel is necessary in the future. If this bet does not pay, the NHS could face an even greater endowment crisis.”

By 2028, the application will allow patients to access a new unique patient file containing details on previous interactions with the NHS such as tests, operations and ambulatory meetings.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer told an audience of front line staff in eastern London: “Look at your phones, look at your applications – because what you see on this screen is that the whole industries have reorganized around applications. Retail, transport, finance, weather – you call it. Why can’t we do this with health?

He said: “We are going to transform the NHS application so that it becomes an essential part of life for everyone. It will become, as technology is developing, such as having a doctor in your pocket, offering you advice 24 hours a week, seven days a week.”

The adoption by the NHS of technology to fight against its evils will also imply an AI to take notes during the consultations of GPS doctors and the hospital with patients and use a generative AI to create the first project of care plans, in order to give clinicians more time with patients.

In a decision designed to develop health standards, patients will be able to see the data underlying the classification of the hospital league tables, which will be published for the first time this summer – like waiting times, how patients have evaluated specific services and the details of their clinical results – and use it to choose the NHS Trust where they will have their next treatment.

The expansion of the role of technology to help the NHS “could be a real gamechanger,” said Thea Stein, director general of Nuffield Trust.

However, she rejected the assertion of the plan that the NHS was so weakened after 14 years of negligence under the conservatives that it “now stands on an existential edge” and needed radical surgery in order to avoid losing public support and becoming a “mediocre two -level service for the poor”.

Although the satisfaction of the public with regard to the NHS of Great Britain has dropped only 21%, the support of its basic principles – a service funded by taxpayers which is open to all and free – remains “high and resilient,” said Stein. “We do not agree with the prophecy of extinction.”

The plan describes how the workforce will implement three “radical changes” in which the NHS will go from analog to digital, treatment for prevention and hospital care to much more community services.

Keir Starmer, launching the plan in London on the eve of the anniversary of the electoral work victory, said that the future of the besieged health service was more pink after the year of his ruling party.

He cited the hiring of 6,000 additional mental health staff and an additional 1,700 gps and “record investment” that the NHS received – 29 billion more pounds per year by 2029 compared to 2023-24 – as proof of the government’s support for this.

“I’m not going to stay here and say everything is perfect now. We have much more work to do and we will.

“But let’s not be illustrated. Due to the fair choices we have made, the difficult work decisions we have taken, the future already seems better for our NHS.”

The plan clearly indicates that in the future, the NHS more focused on prevention will work on the basis that “care should occur as possible; [be] digitally by default; if possible in the home of a patient; in a neighborhood health center if necessary; [and] in a hospital if necessary ”.

In the coming years, billions of NHS financing books will be removed from hospitals and used to create a network of new one -shop health centers “in each community” offering a range of services, including diagnostic tests and mental health support. However, we do not know how many there will be or when they open.

Dr. Jennifer Dixon, the Director General of the Health Foundation, warned that even the injection of labor cash is not sufficient to make his commitment to “put the NHS on foot”.

“The realization of the plan with the proposed resources will be difficult,” she said, given that the average of 2.8% of the NHS budget from 2026 to 2029 was much lower than its historical average of 3.7%.