Millions of people who care for a loved one unpaid will be offered digital help to make handling hospital appointments, prescriptions and care plans easier and stop them being “passed from pillar to post”, The i Paper can reveal.
A new function on the NHS App, called My Carer, will be rolled out nationally from next March after trials showed it successfully cut back on bureaucracy for unpaid carers.
The details are part of the NHS 10-year health plan launched by the Prime Minister and Health Secretary Wes Streeting on Thursday.
Care minister Stephen Kinnock, in an interview with The i Paper, said My Carer would make a difference to the more than 5m people in the UK who currently look after a relative, friend or neighbour without receiving money.
And after a difficult week for Labour, Kinnock also warned that the Government had to get reform of the NHS “right” or risk the rise of “snake oil salesmen” of parties like Reform UK, whom he said wanted to privatise the health service.
From March 2026, users of the NHS App will be able to add the My Carer function to manage appointments, prescriptions, medical history and care plans for the person they look after all in one place.
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The platform will be accessed securely and would need permission from the individual being cared for, while it would also be used by carers as proof of identity when interacting with GPs, hospitals and pharmacies.
The Government said it will end frustrating repeated conversations, missing appointment timings, and help carers better coordinate and plan the care of their loved one or friend.
Kinnock said that My Carer, along with other measures on social care in the 10-year plan, would be introduced in tandem with the ongoing cross-party Casey Commission into social care, which is not due to publish its first report until 2026.
The Government has spent £711m last year and this year on improving conditions for unpaid carers and the individuals they look after, including this year an uplift of £172m on the Disabled Facilities Grant, which could fund around 15,600 home adaptations helping people live independently in their homes.
Kinnock said the NHS App would be “right at the heart of the 10 year plan across the entire waterfront of health and social care” and that My Carer would be a “real step forward” for unpaid carers.
He told The i Paper: “Why is it that people are doing so much of their banking online, booking travel online, why shouldn’t our interaction with public services and particularly with health and social care be done in the same way?
“Unpaid carers are the cornerstone of our care system…
“But fundamentally, the system isn’t set up to facilitate unpaid caring, to support unpaid carers, to make their lives as easy as possible, and they’ll often find themselves being passed from pillar to post.
“Often the person who draws on care is interacting with a number of different clinicians, might be a GP, might be somebody in a secondary care setting, might be somebody in community care.”
Kinnock said that unpaid carers often faced a “nightmare” in trying to book appointments and managing test results.
Improvements to the NHS App, part of a greater digitisation of the health service, form a key part of the 10 year plan.
A plan to introduce a Single Patient Record – where people can store and view their complete medical histories – is expected to be rolled out nationally from 2028.
The Prime Minister and Health Secretary have a 10-year plan for the NHS (Photo: Getty)Patients will also be able to seek AI-assisted medical advice based on their records, as well as make self-referrals for things like mental health treatment.
Ministers want the NHS App, which was first launched in 2019, to be improved to create a “full, digital front door to the health service” which would be a “massive boon for productivity across the board”.
Kinnock added: “Hundreds of millions of pounds are lost in terms of the cost of just sending out all these letters, for example, that we’ll be able to cut back on that.”
He said the My Carer function would be founded on GDPR principles and legal provisions to prevent abuse of the system.
The minister added that patients and carers would be able to see a qualitative difference before the next election.
Kinnock said publication of the 10-year plan was a “huge moment for the country”. He added: “We talk a lot about the NHS almost as if it’s a thing in its own silo. It really isn’t. It is the foundation of our economy.
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“You cannot have a successful and productive and prosperous economy without a strong NHS and care service at its foundation.
“We talk about wanting to have a really strong and cohesive society and culture in our country.
“You can’t have that without a strong and effective health and care system.
“I think the difference now is the sense that if we don’t get it right this time, we really could well end up in a situation where we have some of the snake oil salesmen in other parts of our political life who we know want to privatise the NHS, who want to turn it into a private insurance-based system that is not free at the point of use and is based on your ability to pay rather than your clinical need.
“And this Labour government will never allow that to happen, but this is a moment of truth, and that’s why I think it’s just a really, really big moment for the country.”
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