Karmactive Staff
The NHS has rolled out a new digital feature allowing millions of patients across England to track their prescriptions in real time through the NHS App, similar to how shoppers track online orders.
The service enables users to check if their medicines are “ready to collect” or have been “dispatched by pharmacy” if they’re being delivered. The tracking system aims to reduce unnecessary trips to pharmacies and phone calls about prescription status.
“You will now get a near real-time update in the app that lets you know when your medicine is ready so you can avoid unnecessary trips or leaving it until the last minute to collect,” explained Dr. Vin Diwakar, Clinical Transformation Director at NHS England.
Nearly 1,500 high street pharmacies, including all Boots branches in England, have already implemented the tracking feature. NHS England plans to expand this to almost 5,000 more pharmacies over the next year, eventually covering 60% of all pharmacies in England.
Cutting Phone Calls and Freeing Pharmacists
A key benefit of the new system is reducing the administrative burden on community pharmacies. Currently, about 45% of calls to pharmacies are from patients checking if their prescriptions are ready.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting put it plainly: “If patients can track the journey of their food shop, they should be able to do the same with their prescriptions. By harnessing modern tech, we’re saving patients time and freeing up hardworking pharmacists to do what they do best – helping patients, not providing status updates.”
Anne Higgins, Pharmacy Director at Boots, highlighted how the system will transform their workflow: “This will remove the need for patients to call our pharmacy team for updates on their prescription so they can spend more time with patients and deliver vital services like NHS Pharmacy First.”
Growing Digital Health Usage
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The NHS App has already seen significant adoption, with 37.4 million registered users and about 11.4 million people using it monthly to manage their healthcare.
The prescription tracking feature builds on existing digital services, including the ability to use barcodes for prescription collection, which sees an average of 2.1 million views each month. Repeat prescription orders through the app have increased by 40% to 5.5 million in April 2025.
“A Game-Changer” for Pharmacies
Pharmacy leaders have welcomed the development. Olivier Picard, Chairman of the National Pharmacy Association, called the prescription tracking “a game-changer” and noted: “In many pharmacies, we’ve seen limited patient uptake of the NHS App largely because this functionality wasn’t previously available.”
He emphasized the importance of making the feature available to all independent community pharmacies, which represent the majority of pharmacies in England, to maximize benefits nationwide.
Part of Broader Digital Transformation
The prescription tracker is just one element of the government’s “Plan for Change” to modernize the NHS by shifting from “analogue to digital.” Future improvements to the NHS App will include more appointment options and greater choice as part of efforts to reduce waiting lists and give patients more control over their healthcare.
The digital prescription service also complements other NHS initiatives, such as plans to freeze prescription charges for the first time in three years, which aims to provide cost-of-living relief to millions of patients.
As digital health services continue to expand, the NHS App is positioning itself as a central tool for patients to manage various aspects of their healthcare journey with greater ease and transparency.
