The number of GP appointments that are booked or cancelled using the NHS app have fallen for the third consecutive month, the Health Service Journal has revealed.

Its analysis has found the use of the app dropped to 212,954 in March – a 15% decrease from January and a fall of 28% since October last year, when numbers peaked at 289,451. The HSJ reports the percentage of all GP appointments managed through the app has plateaued, having never reached more than 1%.

More than 36 million people have downloaded the NHS app, the majority of which were in 2021 when there was a requirement for Covid vaccination passes. Although there were 23 million downloads in the year to December 2021, since then just over eight million downloads have been made.

Accessing GP records via the app is also falling, with 5.9 million people doing so in March 2023 compared to 5.8 million in February. However, 12 months ago, about 6.6 million people accessed their GP records via the app, according to the journal’s analysis.

Although NHS Digital reported in January it had achieved its target of having 68% of the adult population of England registered on the app and more than 30 million users, the HSJ reports 28.9 million users have registered with the app, with 27.6 million of those having fully verified their identity with photo ID. NHS England aims to achieve a target of 75% of England’s adult population having signed up to the app by March 2024.