End of the road for Patient Portals and patient engagement platforms in the UK?
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Is this the end of the road for Patient Portals and patient engagement platforms in the UK?
NHS England is proposing to remove much of the current market for third‑party patient engagement portals by pulling core hospital appointment management into the national NHS App, with an estimated saving of around £11M a year.
What HSJ is reporting
HSJ reports that NHS England plans to “dismantle” the existing patient engagement portal supplier market by standardising functions and delivering key appointment features directly via the NHS App, rather than via multiple local portals.
The move is framed as a cost‑saving and simplification measure, with internal estimates suggesting it could save roughly £11m annually across the system.
Context: NHS App as default front door
Government and NHSE policy over the last 2–3 years has been to make the NHS App the primary “front door” for patient communication and appointment management, including through the Wayfinder/Secondary Care Integration Programme.
By April 2025, more than 80–90% of hospitals were already exposing appointment services through the NHS App, which has tens of millions of registered users and is credited with reducing missed appointments and saving staff time.
Implications for portal suppliers
HSJ notes that NHSE has effectively “put patient engagement portal suppliers on notice” by signalling that core appointment functionality will be handled centrally, rather than procured locally from multiple vendors.
In this model, local and third‑party systems are expected to act more as back‑end “engines” feeding data and workflows into the NHS App, rather than as standalone patient‑facing portals in their own right.