The NHS has a new front door

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Pharmacy2U chief Kevin Heath on the growth of digital-first pathways

For years, we’ve talked about transforming the NHS – now we’ve got a clearer view of what that might finally look like. The government’s 10 Year Health Plan sets out a bold course for the NHS, one that will see a shift from sickness to prevention, hospital to community, and analogue to digital.

It rightly recognises the expanding role of primary care, with pharmacy at the centre of that vision, after years of quietly delivering care in the heart of communities. Now, with greater responsibility for prevention, chronic disease management, and vaccinations, the sector is ready to do more.

To truly unlock pharmacy’s potential and meet the scale of ambition expected, every part of the system needs to be designed digital-first. That means encouraging patient journeys to start online, making all services accessible through the NHS App, and allowing data movement between care providers. It’s not just about efficiency, but ensuring patients can access care in a timely, personalised, and convenient way.

Care in the future

The future of care will start not with a waiting room, but with a tap on a phone, laptop, or even through at-home diagnostics.

The NHS App is evolving into a true front door for healthcare, but to make that dream a reality, the NHS must work closely with industry to build the infrastructure that allows every healthcare journey to begin online.

The plan rightly recognises our role in tackling chronic conditions beyond dispensing, and through active, personalised care. We know that pharmacies are uniquely placed to offer accessible community-based care, but true scale starts at the beginning of the healthcare journey.

As the largest digital pharmacy in the UK, we’ve seen this first-hand. When services are simple to access online, more people engage, driving better patient outcomes.

These digital-first clinical pathways will take time to embed into an NHS already playing digital catch-up, but long-term conditions need long-term thinking, and investment today is the only way to deliver the radical change this government has set out to achieve. Cardiovascular disease, the UK’s biggest killer, has risk factors, such as high cholesterol, that are readily measurable and manageable. 

At Pharmacy2U, we recently ran our Healthy Heart study, the largest home-based cholesterol testing programme in England. Nearly 4,000 people completed an eight-week, at-home intervention including a digital finger-prick blood test from our partner PocDoc, together with pharmacist-backed wraparound care.

We wanted to understand how uptake of this digital-first, at-home diagnostic test compared to the routine NHS Health Check, currently attended by just 44 per cent of the eligible population. The results were striking, with nine in 10 saying they’d opt for the service if the NHS offered it.

This method met people at home, in their own time, with minimal friction, with three quarters of participants declaring it more convenient than visiting their GP. It wasn’t just popular, it was effective. Nearly half of the participants’ cholesterol improved over the course of the programme.

One story that stuck with me was Sue’s. She lives on Lundy, a small island just off the North Devon coast and must take four days off work just to visit a GP. Understandably, she’d put off getting her cholesterol checked, despite suspecting something wasn’t right. We offered her the at-home test which finally gave her the information she needed, and within weeks, she was already making progress. Sue’s experience is a powerful reminder of what happens when healthcare is made easy and accessible. People take action. 

If we’re serious about prevention, we need to build digital-first services into the NHS offering, as the default route in. The tools already exist; they just need backing.

Single patient reccord

One of the plan’s most meaningful commitments is the integration of pharmacies into the Single Patient Record by 2028. With proper access to patient data, pharmacists can offer safer joined-up care, and patients won’t have to repeat their story at every turn.

Combined with improved access through the NHS App, and innovations via the HealthStore marketplace, the building blocks are there for a seamless experience. But to realise this we must start seeing digital as the foundation of every patient interaction.

Modernising dispensing, automating repeat prescriptions, managing medication adherence all improve efficiency. But the real win is a system where risk factors or symptoms can be converted from concern to care in a matter of minutes, not months. 

The plan reflects months of dialogue with the sector. From GLP-1 medications to pharmacy-led screening, many of its priorities align with what the profession has been calling for. We now need the practical roadmap: funding, flexibility, and a strategy that recognises the sector’s capacity pressures while investing in its future.

The plan paints an ambitious picture of what our healthcare could look like by the end of the decade. A system focused on prevention, rooted in community, and a patient journey that starts digitally and ends in better health. It’s a future worth building, and it starts now.

Kevin Heath is chief executive of Pharmacy2U