The NHS has announced a new partnership with libraries across England to help more people access online health services and use the NHS App.
The scheme, in partnership with The National Health Literacy Partnership, will officially launch in October – with NHS England contacting public libraries and NHS libraries in the coming weeks to provide toolkits and information. Libraries already play a vital role in making online services more accessible and, according to a recent survey by Ipsos, librarians are the third most trusted profession in Britain.
By providing librarians with the right tools and support, they will be able to play a key part in helping people to use the NHS App and NHS.UK to better understand and manage their health.
John Quinn, Chief Information Officer at NHS England, and a former librarian said: “Public libraries are at the heart of our communities and offer a significant opportunity to reach those who face barriers when it comes to accessing their health information online.
“The NHS App has more than 34 million registered users and we want to ensure no-one is excluded from using this service. My first profession was a librarian, and it was amazing training for the role I do today. Librarians have always been at the forefront of providing services to communities and getting information to people at the right time.”
Louise Goswami, Chief Knowledge Officer for the NHS in England said: “We are delighted to see this development with libraries, which builds on the great work we already do with the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals and public library colleagues, where we have trained 178 health literacy trainers in NHS libraries and run health literacy pilots at 14 public library sites.
“Through these pilots we learned that people were happy to be shown how to use NHS.uk by public library staff, so this phased rollout through public libraries will help even more people to access and make the most of their health information online.”
New figures show that pensioners are the most active users of the NHS App – with more than 5 million having registered with the NHS App – and almost half of them having used it in March to May 2024. That compares to around one in four users in their 20s and around one in three users in their 30s.
The NHS App, which is owned and run by NHS England, was used by 12 million people during March to May 2024, 2.3 million aged 66 and over. Of these, 309,474 users were in their 80s and 34,451 users were aged 90 and over. Figures also show that 11.6 million repeat prescriptions were ordered via the NHS App in those three months, including 3.1 million by pensioners. More than 35 million have now registered for the NHS App since its launch in December 2018.
