Millions in England are set to receive “Amazon-style” updates on their prescriptions through the NHS app, as announced by health officials.
The innovative feature is designed to reduce the workload for pharmacies by cutting down on unnecessary enquiries, thus freeing up time for patient care.
NHS England has revealed that nearly half of all calls to community pharmacies are from individuals enquiring about their prescriptions.
With the NHS app’s latest update, users can now check the status of their prescriptions, knowing when they’re ready for collection or out for delivery.
Dr Vin Diwakar, clinical transformation director at NHS England, said: “We know that people want more control over how they manage their healthcare and the new prescription tracking feature in the NHS app offers exactly that.
“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.
“The new Amazon-style feature will also help to tackle the administrative burden on pharmacists, so that they can spend more of their time providing health services and advice to patients rather than updates on the status of their prescriptions.”
Almost 1,500 high street pharmacies, including Boots, are taking part in the new feature.
Plans are underway to extend this service to close to 5,000 pharmacies within the coming year.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting added: “If patients can track the journey of their food shop, they should be able to do the same with their prescriptions.
“By harnessing the power and efficiency of modern tech, we’re saving patients time, driving productivity and freeing up hardworking pharmacists to do what they do best – helping patients, not providing status updates.”
Boots pharmacy director Anne Higgins said: “For the first time, when a patient orders their prescription via the NHS app and they’ve nominated a Boots pharmacy to dispense it, they can view its journey at every key step of the process.
“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.”
Responding to the NHS announcement, Olivier Picard, chairman of the National Pharmacy Association, said prescription tracking “is a game-changer”.
“In many pharmacies, we’ve seen limited patient uptake of the NHS app largely because this functionality wasn’t previously available,” he added.
“Pharmacies want to do all they can to embrace new technology and make the vital services they offer as easy and convenient as possible for patients to access.
“Anything that allows pharmacies to focus on delivering first-class patient care, rather than spending time on phone calls to provide prescription status updates is welcome news.
“It’s important that this new prescription tracking feature is quickly made available to all independent community pharmacies, who collectively represent the majority of pharmacies in England. This will help maximise the benefit of the service for patients across the country.”
Health service data suggests the NHS app has 37.4 million registered users, with an average of 11.4 million people using it to manage their healthcare every month.
The app also allows patients to use a barcode to collect their prescription, while the number of repeat prescriptions ordered through the app increased by 40% to 5.5 million between April 2024 and April 2025.
