Can AI Help Patients Navigate The NHS?

You open the NHS App because you think you need to see your GP, but instead of simply helping you book an appointment, it starts by asking what’s wrong.

Depending on your answers, you could still be directed to a GP, but you might also be pointed towards a pharmacy, A&E, a community service or advice on looking after yourself at home. Rather than expecting patients to work out which service they need, AI could help guide them towards the most appropriate care.

That’s the thinking behind an AI-assisted triage tool being rolled out through the app in England. Following an initial trial, NHS England says it will reach more than 200,000 patients over the next 12 months, with plans to make it available to all app users by April 2028.

Changing The Way Patients Access Care

The technology adapts the questions it asks depending on a patient’s responses, building a clearer picture of what they need before directing them towards an appropriate service or passing information to clinicians who can prioritise their care. It isn’t intended to replace existing ways of contacting a GP, with patients still able to use traditional routes if they prefer.

An initial trial at a GP practice in Sussex offers an early indication of what that could mean in practice, resulting in a 29% reduction in the number of people queuing on the phone while patient satisfaction remained at the same level.

Reducing the morning scramble for GP appointments would be useful in itself, but there’s a more interesting change underneath it. Accessing healthcare often starts with us making our own decision about what we need: we decide we need a GP appointment and then try to get one.

AI-assisted triage changes that slightly. Instead of choosing the service first, the patient describes what’s wrong and the system helps work out where they might need to go next.

What Happens When The Recommendation Isn’t What You Expected?

That process is relatively straightforward when the recommendation matches what you already thought, but the bigger test may come when it doesn’t;

• If you’ve opened the app convinced that you need to see a doctor and it recommends speaking to a pharmacist or looking after yourself at home, will you trust it enough to follow that advice?
• Equally, if it decides your symptoms need more urgent attention than you realised, will you feel confident that it’s got that decision right?

Those questions matter because the value of triage doesn’t come simply from making a recommendation. It depends on people being willing to act on it, while having confidence that the system will recognise when their situation needs human or more urgent attention.

Keeping other routes into care available is important too; AI might help some people find the right service more quickly, but that doesn’t mean everybody will want, or be able, to navigate healthcare through an app.

For all the attention given to what AI might eventually diagnose or discover in healthcare, this is a much more ordinary use of the technology. It’s being introduced before much of the healthcare has even begun, helping people work out where they need to go next.

If it works, the impact may be felt not because patients suddenly have an AI doctor in their pocket, but because fewer of them have to work out where to turn in the first place.