My Medical Gateway News

The NHS’s new NHS Online service represents a welcome recognition that remote consultations can improve access to specialist care. The problem is timing. The service will not launch until late 2027 and will initially exclude major high-demand specialities such as orthopaedics and spinal surgery, leaving millions of patients still waiting.

The NHS has finally discovered what healthcare innovators have known for years: not every specialist consultation requires a patient to travel to a hospital.

This week, the NHS announced the creation of NHS Online, a new virtual hospital service designed to connect patients with specialist doctors through remote video consultations. The service will be chaired by former Tesco.com chief executive John Browett, whose brief is to make accessing healthcare as convenient as online shopping.

For anyone familiar with My Medical Gateway, the announcement feels remarkably familiar.

Since MMG’s launch in 2024, our model has been built around the principle that patients should be able to share medical records digitally, receive specialist opinions remotely and discuss treatment options through video consultations before travelling for treatment. The objective has always been simple: reduce unnecessary delays, improve convenience and give patients faster access to specialist expertise.

The NHS is now reaching the same conclusion.

However, there is an important reality that many patients may overlook when reading the headlines. While NHS Online is a welcome development, it is unlikely to have a significant impact on the NHS waiting list crisis for several years.

According to The Times, the service is not expected to launch until autumn 2027. That means patients currently facing long waits for treatment will see little immediate benefit.

Even when it does launch, its initial scope will be limited. The service will reportedly focus on menopause, prostate, eye and stomach conditions before expanding more widely.

Notably absent are many of the procedures driving demand across the NHS and many of the treatments most frequently sought by MMG patients. There is currently no indication that NHS Online will initially address major orthopaedic specialities such as knee replacements, hip replacements, shoulder surgery, spinal surgery or ACL reconstruction. Yet these are precisely the areas where many patients face some of the longest waits and where delays can have a profound impact on quality of life.

The NHS’s embrace of remote consultations is therefore significant, but it does not solve the underlying challenge facing millions of patients today.

The official waiting list currently stands at around 7.2 million treatment pathways, although the true number of patients waiting for care is likely to be considerably higher. For many of those patients, waiting until late 2027 for a new digital service that may not even cover their condition is simply not a practical option.

This is why alternative models of care continue to grow in importance. Patients increasingly want rapid access to specialist opinions, clear treatment plans and the ability to move from diagnosis to treatment without spending months or years navigating waiting lists.

The NHS deserves credit for recognising that digital consultations can improve efficiency and patient experience. In many respects, NHS Online represents a belated endorsement of a model that organisations such as MMG have already been successfully delivering for years.

The difference is that MMG patients do not have to wait until 2027 to benefit from it.