Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to provide continuing and updated services to match the development and use of the NHS app for those unable or unwilling to use a smart phone, to ensure that such patients have equivalent access to services.

We are working to improve access to digital services, outcomes, and experiences for the widest range of people, based on their preferences. Digital health tools should be part of a wider offering that includes face-to-face support with appropriate help for people who struggle to access digital services.

We conduct user research on an ongoing basis with users from diverse backgrounds to ensure our service works for everyone. This includes patients with a range of access needs and diverse groups, for instance ethnic minority groups, visual impairments, neurodiversity, and physical impairments. We have recruited users who are blind or partially sighted in community-based research, research with local National Health Service teams, and in remote research, either one to one or in groups. We use the findings of user research to plan and prioritise new work to improve accessibility.

NHS England has successfully run several programmes to support patients, carers, and health service staff with their digital skills. These include:

- the Digital Health Champions programme, which is a proof of concept to support citizens who have no or low digital skills with understanding how to access health services online;

- the Widening Digital Participation programme, which is aimed at ensuring more people have the digital skills, motivation, and means to access health information and services online; and

- the NHS App ‘Spoken Word’ Pilot project, which is designed to test the efficacy of promoting NHS digital health products and services in languages other than English.

We have also recruited over 2,000 NHS App ambassadors and 1,400 libraries to help people to learn how to use the NHS App.

NHS England has published a framework for NHS action on digital inclusion and is developing further resources to support practical actions. All programmes are actively considering how they can contribute to improvements in healthcare inequalities and digital inclusion.