NHS Direct mobile app - for trusted health advice straight to your pocket
26 May 2011
NHS Direct has launched a free mobile app so people can access its trusted and reliable health advice conveniently from wherever they are.
Outcomes may include instant on-screen self-care advice or instructions on the most appropriate course of action. Patients can save any self-care advice they receive back to the app or email it to themselves so that they can access it easily at a later date. The app is linked to NHS Direct’s telephone service and, if a further assessment is recommended, users will be able to submit their contact details so that an NHS Direct nurse advisor can call them back. Patients will be able to review and amend their answers at any point and expand information on specific symptoms should they need additional help identifying them.
Specialist advice
The app includes access to 37 health and symptom checkers covering a wide range of problems including dental pain, diarrhoea and vomiting, abdominal pain, rashes, back pain and burns. Patients can also get advice about how to relieve symptoms associated with specific conditions such as flu and hay fever. There’s also the opportunity to get more specialist advice on issues such as mental health, contraception, sexual health matters and pregnancy problems.
Vicky Wood, 29, from Milton Keynes had access to the app prior to its release. She is married with two sons, Craig, seven, and Scott, 19 months. She says:
“Having a young family, it’s really helpful to be able to access health advice quickly. I’ve used the NHS Direct telephone service before, and I regularly use the online tools when I’m at home, so it was great to be able to access their advice away from home through my mobile. The thing I noticed straight away was how quick and easy it was to use. I found the explanations of why I was being asked certain questions really useful, and the function to expand information on certain symptoms meant that I could quickly understand anything I’d not come across before.
“I have found that rashes on the kids can look very different when they first appear to a day or so later, so being able to save the self-care advice onto my phone to refer back to on another day would give me additional reassurance and prevent me needing to seek a second opinion from my GP or walk-in centre. Although my boys are too young to have a phone, I can see how this would be very popular with my teenage niece, who wouldn’t particularly want to discuss health concerns with an adult.”
Roger Donald, Associate Director of Multichannel, NHS Direct, said:
“The NHS Direct app has been developed in response to the popularity of this new mobile channel and to the specific needs of the growing number of patients who prefer to access health advice online. Patients can access rapid and convenient health advice through the app with the reassurance that the information is from a trusted source. Our online health and symptom checkers are already extremely popular and we hope that by making them mobile we will benefit more people and continue to contribute to helping take pressure off other local NHS services.”
Download free of charge
The NHS Direct app is now available for both Android and iPhone:
The NHS Direct app for iPhone is available to download free from iTunes®
The NHS Direct app for Android is available to download free from Android Market™
The health and symptom checkers that are available through the app are also available online at www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk.
Additionally, NHS Direct’s online initial assessment symptom checker is now available on web-enabled mobile phones by typing ‘mobile.nhsdirect.nhs.uk’ into the phone web-browser.
People who would prefer to speak to someone, have not got internet access or think a further discussion about their symptoms is needed can still call NHS Direct on 0845 46 47 any time day or night.
Digital service innovation
The development of innovative digital services is a strong focus for NHS Direct’s five year business plan. Giving patients remote and virtual options to empower them and encourage self-service is identified as crucial to its ambitions to provide a more valued service to patients and to support the wider NHS.
Advice can be saved on to a person’s phone for up to 30 days.
Screen shots of the app and a photograph of app reviewer, Vicky Wood, are available from Lisa Potter tel: 0207 599 4223 or lisa.potter@nhsdirect.nhs.uk
Apple is a trademark of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.
Android is a trademark of Google Inc. Use of this trademark is subject to Google Permissions.
For further information please contact the press office on 0207 599 4223 or on 07876 596932.
Related Links
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