Britons have been urged to switch on an important feature on the official NHS app. The National Health Service has launched a new campaign called Tap the NHS App, calling on the public to activate alerts about upcoming appointments, as it looks to tackle the unnecessary costs incurred by large numbers of patients missing check-ups.

NHS leaders are urging the public to activate alerts on the platform, following a poll that found one in four people have missed a health appointment. By enabling "push notifications" patients are given reminders in advance of an appointment and can use it to reschedule if need be. It's hoped that doing so could help free up millions of appointments for others. NHS England is also calling on people to use the app to request repeat prescriptions instead of visiting their GP practice.

It comes after the NHS rolled out a new Amazon-style prescription tracking feature in the NHS App last year, which updates users on the progress of their prescription and when it's ready for collection. It can currently be used at 2,000 pharmacies across England.

The health service pointed to a new survey, showing that almost one in four people have missed an NHS appointment because they forgot or arrived too late.

The survey of patients across England found that 12% said they had forgotten about an appointment in the past, and 11% had arrived too late for one.

The latest appointment statistics also showed that patients did not attend 16 million GP appointments last year, with 1 in 23 appointments (4.3%) being no-shows.

The NHS says this is the equivalent of an entire day of missed appointments at every GP practice in England each month, and it comes as the number of GP appointments has risen.

According to figures, the NHS arranged 376 million GP practice appointments in 2025 - 8.4 million more (2.3%) than the year before.

Besides booking and cancelling appointments, the app can be used to check your GP health record, and access a range of NHS services to manage your own care.

Users enable notifications in the settings section in the NHS App. Updating your contact details will ensure you get important messages about your healthcare.

Tap the NHS App campaign adverts are appearing on pharmacy bags, radio channels and social media.

Dr Amanda Doyle, national director for primary care and community services at NHS England, said: "People will often have genuine reasons for not being able to make an appointment or arriving too late, but it's really important that they let us know if possible so we can offer the appointment to someone else.

"One of the easiest ways you can reduce the risk of missing an appointment is by tapping the NHS app to turn on notifications to get reminders, so you can cancel or rearrange them if they need to.

"It's fantastic to see that GPs provided more than eight million extra appointments for their patients in 2025, and I hope this new campaign will help increase that number even more in 2026. I'd encourage all NHS app users to make the most of what the app has to offer so they never forget an appointment."