A cabinet minister has admitted that technology tools in the Scottish NHS have fallen behind those south of the border, but has pledged that an incoming platform has significant advantages

The Scottish Government’s health minister has acknowledged that the country’s NHS app needs work to catch up to its English counterpart – but has claimed that Scotland’s program bringing together health and social care services is a chance for “moving back ahead”.

Speaking at Transforming Scotland’s Health conference recently hosted by PublicTechnology sister publication Holyrood, cabinet secretary for health and social care Neil Gray faced a question from the audience concerning the slow development of the NHS Scotland digital app.

“It’s a good question and I can’t pretend to know the answer to that,” said Gray. “Certainly, since I’ve came into office, I’ve been keen to make sure that we move as fast as possible in rolling that out.” 

Scotland’s national health and social care app, MyCare.scot, is not fully available yet. In England, its NHS app was launched in 2019 after a pilot programme in 2018. Current plans for Scotland’s version include a pilot scheme in December in Lanarkshire, with a full rollout of the app scheduled for April 2026. 

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Meanwhile, the NHS App in England was launched at the tail end of 2018 and has since accrued close to 40 million registered users.

“The digital app in England doesn’t integrate between health and social care, it’s only health-based and we are bringing that together on a health and social care basis,” said Gray. “We’ve legislated in the care reform board to make it easier for our systems to be sharing our care data so that we can have that better integration to enable the success of the health and social care app.” 

In England, the NHS app is used to order repeat prescriptions, book hospital appointments and view test results. In the Covid-19 pandemic it was also instrumental in managing immunisations, providing users with an online service to prove their vaccination status. 

“There’s no secret about the fact that we’ve been behind England in that regard, that they’ve moved faster and that we need to catch up,” said Gray. “But I believe that the way that we have developed the app here in Scotland, moving to an integrated health and care app, will be one that will see us moving back ahead and ensuring that people here in Scotland can get access to their appointments, their health records, their services that are available and wider applications that may be available within it.”