Frome Medical Practice Pilot Shows NHS App Can Streamline Family Healthcare
Digital trial helps carers manage appointments, prescriptions, and records while reducing admin time
Last updated 3rd Oct 2025
Frome Medical Practice has completed a pilot of a new NHS app feature designed to make it easier for carers and families to manage healthcare. The trial, which ran for nearly two years, allowed users to book appointments, order repeat prescriptions, and access medical records digitally.
Will Palmer, digital community connector at the practice, said, “Carers in care homes, they having access to their residents and NHS app that again helps with speed so they can order the repeat prescriptions particularly. It saves time for the carers, it saves time for admin. It’s secure because they’re using an NHS e-mail. It’s a coordination of care effort.”
Palmer highlighted the benefits for families as well as care homes. “It’s not just parents with young children or children with elderly parents. It is it can be other people out there who sort of say, well, I want my spouse to have access and that other spouse to have access to theirs as well. So it can be a two-way thing,” he said.
He described the broader impact on practice efficiency: “For people, for those carers to order all their residents and repeat prescriptions, if you can imagine how many people that are in a care home and a limited number of carers, it’s really again a big time saver for them as internal staff too. So it helps people across the board.”
Palmer also spoke about the potential for future improvements. “I think it’s just a brilliant process and I honestly, I don’t know, but I can honestly see there will be lots of other benefits in the NHS app coming up.”
In addition to his work at Frome Medical Practice, Palmer runs a charity called Donate IT, which refurbishes old devices and distributes them free of charge to those in need. “We take in people’s old devices, refurbish them where we can, and then give them out free of charge to people who need them” he said.
Palmer praised colleagues working on digital inclusion. “Simon is a really special individual. He’s really great, hard working, and he’s doing some really remarkable work for people out there,” he said.