Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust has been connected into the NHS App through an integration with patient engagement firm DrDoctor.

As a result of the integration more than 50,000 patients served by the trust can access features such as viewing, rescheduling and cancelling appointments, receiving notifications, messaging, managing documents and questionnaires, and checking their appointment history.

The integration was made possible by DrDoctor’s agnostic platform, which allows NHS trusts to integrate with the NHS App, regardless of which electronic patient record (EPR) or patient administration system (PAS) is in place.

Jalil Mohammed, senior improvement lead at Birmingham Women’s and Children’s, said: “At Birmingham Women’s and Children’s, we’re always looking for ways to empower our patients and families, and this integration helps us deliver on that ambition by putting more control directly into their hands.

“We’re delighted to be the first Epic EPR trust to integrate with the NHS App through DrDoctor.

“This is a really important step in making healthcare more accessible and convenient for our patients, giving them a single, trusted place to manage their appointments and key information.”

It marks the first Epic EPR trust in the UK to go live into the NHS App via DrDoctor, and is a step towards the goal set out in the NHS Wayfinder service to integrate every acute trust into the NHS App.

DrDoctor worked with the trust’s integration team to transform Epic’s outbound data feeds for use in DrDoctor’s patient engagement platform.

This information was then reformatted to provide a corresponding feed into the NHS App, allowing the relevant functionality to be surfaced for patients.

Nick Barlow, transformation director at DrDoctor, said: “By integrating with Epic at Birmingham Women’s and Children’s and connecting them to the NHS App, we’ve shown that trusts can deliver joined-up patient engagement quickly, securely and without disruption.

“Our goal is to make interoperability real, helping trusts unlock value from existing investments while giving patients a simpler, more connected experience.”

The integration follows the publication of the 10 year health plan, which set developing the NHS App as the standardised patient portal as a main priority.

Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS FT went live with the Epic EPR in May 2025 to provide a core clinical information system, replacing previous IT systems, including PAS and several legacy specialty systems.

Meanwhile, NHS Humber Health Partnership has partnered with DrDoctor to launch a range of patient-facing digital tools aimed at improving communication and outpatient engagement. Rollout began in July 2025 with a two-week pilot programme in the neurology speciality, which includes all tools except for patient-led scheduling, which will follow later.