Scotland’s ill-fated NHS app will only be available to dermatology patients after being scaled back by ministers but still faces “significant issues” being delivered on time, an internal review has found.
Known as the digital front door, the health and social care app was first announced in 2021 but has been branded a “national embarrassment” as it is yet to get off the ground.
A stocktake, seen by The Times, said the app had been reduced to a “more limited scope … than originally envisaged” after ministers brought the launch date forward by four months.
At first patients will only be able to receive appointment letters for one specialty, dermatology, at a single health board, NHS Lanarkshire. The system will also let users view personal information and search for health services.
In contrast, England’s NHS App, which has 35 million users, allows patients to message GPs, order repeat prescriptions and receive test results.
That’s… So incredibly limited. It’s basically replacing a letter from a single department.
You know what could do this, a text message.
can we just use the English one? I know, unpopular here, we have to be different… but theirs works.
Government IT project official measures of success:
Worked (Never happens) < National Embarrassment < International Embarrassment < Caused a War < Caused Two Wars < Everybody died < Brexit
This is actually a level two success and we should celebrate it.
The NHS App in England brilliantly but the SNPs we have to find a Scottish solution is yet again costing us £Ms. They were offered the chance to work with the U.K. government on an NHS app and refused. But in this Nat friendly sub they’ll still defend the SNP like lemmings. It’s people’s lives they’re playing with all because a cult became a cause.
What a waste of time. The English NHS app is really good and well-featured. Why did we not just make use of that with some tweaks, rather than spend a bunch on money developing something much worse?
Why not make this in open-source-land?
7 years ago NHS England launched their app. Which is now in use by 3/4 of the adult population.
Throughout the years the SNP has maintained the version they started working on, 4 years after the NHS England app launched, would somehow leapfrog it in functionality.
It would be so great if the SNP could keep their normal bluster and empty promises out of the healthcare system and for once actually delivered for patients.
The one service – dermatology – is just for the trial version being launched/tested in NHS Lanarkshire. This bulk of this article makes it sound like the finished product, sadly years away now, will only provide one service when that’s not the case.
If you skip to the end it says:
> A Scottish government spokesman said: “The Health and Social Care app is on course to launch initially in Lanarkshire in 2025. Like any digital service, good practice means the initial version will be tested thoroughly prior to wider roll-out.
> This will begin with a limited number of services which will then be extended and expanded across Scotland. A national roll-out will begin in 2026 and plans for that will be set out this summer.”
If the launch is coming forward four months, and limiting itself to just one service & region…
Isn’t this just a gradual roll out? Is that a bad thing? This means the inevitable initial bugs will affect fewer people. If it were up to me, I’d launch it in phases, starting with the kind of scope described here.
Maybe there’s more nuance behind the paywall, but this seems preferable to moving everything in one “big bang” before the bugs are worked out.
So they developed an app that any email service that already existed could match. How much was this?
Yet another failure.
What is the point in a government that isn’t capable of implementing it’s own policies?
12 comments
Scotland’s ill-fated NHS app will only be available to dermatology patients after being scaled back by ministers but still faces “significant issues” being delivered on time, an internal review has found.
Known as the digital front door, the health and social care app was first announced in 2021 but has been branded a “national embarrassment” as it is yet to get off the ground.
A stocktake, seen by The Times, said the app had been reduced to a “more limited scope … than originally envisaged” after ministers brought the launch date forward by four months.
At first patients will only be able to receive appointment letters for one specialty, dermatology, at a single health board, NHS Lanarkshire. The system will also let users view personal information and search for health services.
In contrast, England’s NHS App, which has 35 million users, allows patients to message GPs, order repeat prescriptions and receive test results.
That’s… So incredibly limited. It’s basically replacing a letter from a single department.
You know what could do this, a text message.
can we just use the English one? I know, unpopular here, we have to be different… but theirs works.
Government IT project official measures of success:
Worked (Never happens) < National Embarrassment < International Embarrassment < Caused a War < Caused Two Wars < Everybody died < Brexit
This is actually a level two success and we should celebrate it.
The NHS App in England brilliantly but the SNPs we have to find a Scottish solution is yet again costing us £Ms. They were offered the chance to work with the U.K. government on an NHS app and refused. But in this Nat friendly sub they’ll still defend the SNP like lemmings. It’s people’s lives they’re playing with all because a cult became a cause.
What a waste of time. The English NHS app is really good and well-featured. Why did we not just make use of that with some tweaks, rather than spend a bunch on money developing something much worse?
Why not make this in open-source-land?
7 years ago NHS England launched their app. Which is now in use by 3/4 of the adult population.
Throughout the years the SNP has maintained the version they started working on, 4 years after the NHS England app launched, would somehow leapfrog it in functionality.
https://www.digitalhealth.net/2024/10/scotland-s-digital-front-door-platform-to-go-beyond-the-nhs-app/
It would be so great if the SNP could keep their normal bluster and empty promises out of the healthcare system and for once actually delivered for patients.
The one service – dermatology – is just for the trial version being launched/tested in NHS Lanarkshire. This bulk of this article makes it sound like the finished product, sadly years away now, will only provide one service when that’s not the case.
If you skip to the end it says:
> A Scottish government spokesman said: “The Health and Social Care app is on course to launch initially in Lanarkshire in 2025. Like any digital service, good practice means the initial version will be tested thoroughly prior to wider roll-out.
> This will begin with a limited number of services which will then be extended and expanded across Scotland. A national roll-out will begin in 2026 and plans for that will be set out this summer.”
If the launch is coming forward four months, and limiting itself to just one service & region…
Isn’t this just a gradual roll out? Is that a bad thing? This means the inevitable initial bugs will affect fewer people. If it were up to me, I’d launch it in phases, starting with the kind of scope described here.
Maybe there’s more nuance behind the paywall, but this seems preferable to moving everything in one “big bang” before the bugs are worked out.
So they developed an app that any email service that already existed could match. How much was this?
Yet another failure.
What is the point in a government that isn’t capable of implementing it’s own policies?
Comments are closed.