The NHS has confirmed a new partnership that will support increases to people’s access to online health services.
Launching officially in October, the programme will see the NHS partnering with The National Health Literacy Partnership. This will see public and NHS libraries contacted in the next few weeks to be provided with toolkits and information, with libraries playing a critical role in the accessibility of online services.
This also comes as a recent survey from Ipsos has outlined how librarians are supposedly the third most trusted profession in Britain. As the NHS embarks on this plan, it is expected that librarians will be able to play an even greater role in supporting people to use the NHS app and website to better manage their health and wellbeing.
NHS England’s Chief Information Officer, John Quinn, said:
“Public libraries are at the heart of our communities and offer a significant opportunity to reach those who face barriers when it comes to accessing their health information online.
“The NHS App has more than 34 million registered users and we want to ensure no-one is excluded from using this service.
“My first profession was a librarian, and it was amazing training for the role I do today. Librarians have always been at the forefront of providing services to communities and getting information to people at the right time.”
According to data, pensioners are the most active users of the NHS App, as more than 5 million of them have registered. Alongside this, almost half of these have used it between March and May 2024. That figure comes in comparison to one in every four users in their 20s and one in every three users in their 30s.
Between March and May 2024 12 million people used the NHS app, with 2.3 million of these being aged 66 or over. Of those, more than 300,000 were in their 80s and more than 30,000 were aged 90 and over.
Figures have also outlined how 11.6 million repeat prescriptions were ordered via the app in that three-month period, with 3.1 million of these being made by pensioners.
Louise Goswami, Chief Knowledge Officer, added:
"We are delighted to see this development with libraries, which builds on the great work we already do with the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals and public library colleagues, where we have trained 178 health literacy trainers in NHS libraries and run health literacy pilots at 14 public library sites.
“Through these pilots we learned that people were happy to be shown how to use NHS.uk by public library staff, so this phased rollout through public libraries will help even more people to access and make the most of their health information online.”
Image credit: iStock
