The NHS MyCare.scot App, Scotland’s answer to the English NHS app, has been downloaded by only 22,206 people since being launched in June, according to new figures obtained by the Mail on Sunday.
The development of the Scottish version of the NHS app has cost £17 million but has been downloaded by approximately 0.5% of the population and has had several technical problems since it was launched. By comparison, uptake for the NHS app in England stands at almost 90%.
The revelation follows a report co-authored by former Scottish Health Secretary Alex Neil earlier this month, which recommended Scotland should use the English NHS version instead of “trying to reinvent the wheel”.
The app follows many years of discussion across the health sector about the need to improve digitisation and make it easier for patients to view record information and manage their appointments and medications digitally, and comes as part of the Scottish Government’s digital front door strategy.
“Digital health apps are notoriously difficult to develop and roll out at scale without problems” commented Jason Mitchell, a Partner at MHA who works with health tech firms.
“It requires joining up siloed information from across the health system and creating a user-friendly front door for patients to view health information and take action. The complexity of doing this at scale is compounded by accessibility issues, which might mean many frequent elderly NHS users don’t end up using the app at all” he said.
The MyCare app does not currently allow patients to order repeat prescriptions, and additional features like appointment bookings are not likely to be rolled out until 2030. It follows models in Northern Ireland and Wales where a similar My Care app and NHS Wales app were rolled out and now report 23% and 25% adoption rates respectively.
A Scottish Government spokesman said it was inaccurate to suggest the NHS England app could be used in Scotland given the entirely different IT infrastructure.
The UK has a successful digital health sector, with many companies seeking to explore how using AI could improve care, service efficiency, and the patient experience. Mitchell argues the UK is a great place to develop digital health solutions but that “the difficulty of operating at scale is often underestimated, which can lead to poor experiences and a lack of engagement. Apps need to offer more than view-only and should build in transactional utility like booking functionality in order to become sticky and boost retention and usage.”
