A US technology company is set to earn more than £3 million a year from NHS use of its patient portal app, according to new research. Epic’s MyChart application, part of its wider electronic patient record suite, is now a central tool for patients at ten major hospital trusts in England. It allows them to view appointment dates, receive messages, and access their health records.
The Health Service Journal’s investigation found that MyChart has been downloaded 2.3 million times. With the NHS paying Epic a flat fee of £1.50 per patient download, that translates into annual earnings of around £3 million for the company. This figure is likely to rise as more trusts adopt Epic’s system, including East Suffolk and North Essex FT and hospitals in Devon over the coming year.
Epic’s presence in the NHS has been growing steadily. Trusts such as Manchester University Foundation Trust and King’s College Hospital have already embedded its EPR system into daily operations. The MyChart app is an important part of that ecosystem, giving patients direct digital access to their information and enabling hospitals to communicate with them more efficiently.
But the financial scale of Epic’s earnings from what is essentially a per-patient subscription model raises questions about how NHS digital services are procured and integrated. At the same time, the government is investing heavily in the NHS App, which is intended to be the central digital front door for patients as part of the 10-Year Health Plan. The coexistence of both platforms has inevitably led to debate about overlap, duplication, and the degree of true interoperability between them.
Some integration has been attempted. Patients can now access MyChart from within the NHS App via a dedicated button. However, critics argue that this is a limited form of interoperability, falling short of the seamless data sharing and unified user experience that policymakers have promised. Instead of one fully integrated system, patients are left navigating between different platforms, each with its own interface and features.
The policy question is whether the NHS should continue to pay significant sums to third-party providers for patient-facing tools when it is also funding the development of its own national platform. Advocates of the current approach point out that Epic’s system is embedded in the clinical workflow of many hospitals, offering functionality and integration that the NHS App cannot yet match. Others argue that the long-term goal should be to consolidate digital services to avoid duplication, improve the patient experience, and reduce costs.
This is not simply a matter of technology. It is about the shape of the NHS’s digital future and how public money is used to achieve it. If the NHS App is to be the single gateway for patients, then integration with systems like MyChart must be more than cosmetic. It needs to allow real-time, two-way data flows and offer the same level of service within the national app that patients currently receive from separate portals.
Epic’s growing income from the NHS highlights the trade-offs inherent in digital health strategy. On one hand, it shows the value of proven commercial products that can be deployed quickly and deliver reliable functionality. On the other, it raises the question of whether reliance on external providers undermines the ambition to create a unified, publicly controlled digital health platform.
The debate over MyChart’s role is ultimately about priorities. Should the NHS focus on building out its own app to meet all patient needs, or should it continue to rely on specialist third-party tools even if that means ongoing annual payments to overseas companies? With digital services set to be a core part of how patients interact with the NHS in the future, these decisions will have lasting implications for cost, control, and the quality of care.
