The number of patients using the NHS App has more than doubled in the space of three months.
At the beginning of September a total of 91,000 patients were registered to use the app, compared with the 220,00 now signed up, NHS England said.
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The app allows patients to access their GP record, book an appointment, order repeat prescriptions and access NHS 111 online.
NHS England said September saw 1.4 million online transactions take place about booking GP appointments. An estimated 26.4 million GP appointments that took place in that month.
It follows the ‘NHS App Ambassadors’ campaign led by chief nurse Ruth May, which is encouraging staff working for the health service to download the app themselves and promote it to others.
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There are currently 645 app ambassadors – including 113 nurses – working across England working to encourage colleagues to use the app.
These are frontline NHS staff who signed up to the scheme announced in September, Tara Donnelly, Chief Digital Officer at NHSX, said: ‘NHS staff play an important role in telling people about the NHS App and supporting them to use it.
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‘As members of NHS staff, we all use the NHS too and so we’ve been talking to staff about how the NHS App can really benefit them, especially given the busy lives so many lead.’
Ian Phoenix, director of technology for Citizen Health at NHS Digital, said: ‘It’s fantastic to see so many NHS staff choosing to use the NHS App themselves and reporting back to us that they’re seeing benefits, whether it be from being able to quickly and simply order their repeat prescriptions, view their medical records, set their organ donation preferences or check symptoms.’
