DHSC pushes NHS App flu eligibility and pharmacy booking as jabs pass 10 million

The Department of Health and Social Care began promoting a new NHS App feature on 22 October that lets people check whether they qualify for a free flu vaccine and book one at a community pharmacy ¹. The push comes with a social media campaign that, for the first time, includes TikTok alongside Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat ¹.

What the department announced

More than 10 million flu vaccinations have been given in England since bookings opened in August and jabs started in September, 2.7 million of them in the latest week, according to data DHSC published the same day ¹. The NHS App can already show users which vaccinations they are eligible for by age, and lets them book COVID-19, flu, MenB and RSV vaccinations from its Vaccinations section ². The new step is to route flu bookings to community pharmacies through the app and to back it with the campaign ¹.

Two other digital measures sit in the same package. The Manage a Vaccination in School programme, known as MAVIS, which streamlines school-age immunisation, has been brought forward to cover 14,000 schools this year ¹. Dr Amanda Doyle, NHS National Director for Primary Care and Community Services, said parents are being offered new digital forms to consent to their child's vaccination in school ¹. Later in the year the government plans the first catch-up programme run from community pharmacies for school children who missed their jabs ¹.

What it means for the market

The package shifts more of the flu programme's front door onto national digital channels. For community pharmacies, app-based booking is a direct route to eligible patients that does not run through the GP practice. GP practices remain one of the routes, but the app now sits alongside them as a national entry point. For suppliers of school immunisation and consent software, a single national system reaching 14,000 schools is the benchmark for scale. The sources do not say how the pharmacy bookings are funded or contracted ¹.

The case for the spend rests on prevention. UKHSA estimates that flu vaccination prevented around 100,000 hospitalisations and 7,000 deaths in England in the last year ¹. DHSC is also working with charities including the British Heart Foundation, Diabetes UK and Macmillan Cancer Support, which have signed a joint open letter urging eligible people to take up the vaccine ¹.

Caveats

The announcement gives no figure for how many bookings have come through the NHS App or how many users have used the new eligibility check, so the feature's own contribution to the 10 million total cannot be separated out ¹. The NHS App help page notes that bookings made or changed recently can take a few days to appear, and that private vaccinations are not recorded by the NHS, which limits the completeness of the app's vaccination record ². The pharmacy catch-up programme for school children is scheduled for later this year ¹.