The NHS has reported that their app has saved the health service £1.1 million on the cost of previously sending the information via text message.

Last year, 22.5 million messages were sent through the NHS app, which would have previously been sent as a text message or letter.

The average cost of sending a text message is around 5p, which they said represents a saving of at least £1.1 million. 

The messaging services available in the NHS App depends on a patient’s GP surgery or healthcare provider, but many users can view messages from their NHS healthcare services, see responses from their GP practice or follow up on things like test results, and view messages to their healthcare provider.

Dr Vin Diwakar, national transformation director at NHS England, said the app is also saving the NHS "significant amounts of money on text messages and postal stamps, and these savings will only get larger as more features are added to the app in the future."

He added: “By encouraging more people to use the NHS App, with notifications switched on, we can really start to reduce the estimated £450 million per year that is currently spent on communicating with patients.” 

The NHS App now has more than 34 million registered users, which is around three quarters of the adult population in England.

Since the beginning of this year, the average number of NHS app logins per weekday is nearly 1.2 million.

Health minister, Andrew Stephenson said: “More than 34 million of us are now using the NHS App, which allows people in England to access health services like ordering repeat prescriptions and booking appointments quickly and easily online, while saving the NHS millions of pounds and freeing up time.

“As we announced in the Budget, we are investing £3.4 billion in upgrading and enhancing technology in the NHS as part of our plan to make our healthcare system faster, simpler, and fairer, so that doctors and nurses can spend more time with patients and less time on admin.”