‘Amazon-style’ prescription tracking goes live on NHS App

An “Amazon-style” prescription tracking feature has been rolled out in the NHS App, with the aim of helping to reduce unnecessary calls and visits to pharmacies.

NHS England announced on 23 May 2025 that nearly 1,500 high street chemists, including every Boots in England, are now offering the service, which enables patients to check their prescriptions through real-time updates.

This equates to around 15% of the 9,999 community pharmacies in England, according to data from the NHS Business Services Authority, published at the end of March 2025.

The service is expected to be made available to nearly 5,000 more pharmacies over the next 12 months, covering 60% of those in England.

Dr Vin Diwakar, clinical transformation director at NHSE, 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 half (45%) of phone calls to community pharmacies are estimated to be from patients asking if their prescription is ready, with the new online service helping to free up time for pharmacists.

Latest data from NHSE show that the NHS App has 37.4 million registered users with an average of 11.4m people logging in each month.

Wes Streeting, health secretary, said: “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.”

The prescription tracker builds on another app feature which allows people without a nominated pharmacy to use a barcode to collect their prescription – with an average of 2.1m views of digital prescription barcodes each month.

Anne Higgins, pharmacy director at Boots, 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.”

The prescription tracking feature on the NHS App was first announced by Nishali Patel, clinical lead for digital medicines at NHSE, in September 2024, who said it would be piloted at three community pharmacies in England.

She added that the feature would be rolled out more widely following the pilot, with at least 30% of community pharmacies in England expected to be live by April 2025.