KinCarer / Blog

Best Health Record Apps for UK Families Caring for a Parent

Compare the best health record apps in the UK for families caring for an elderly parent: NHS App, Apple Health, Patients Know Best and KinCarer.

By The KinCarer team ·

If you are looking after an elderly parent, the best health record app is rarely one app. In the UK, the official record of your mum’s health sits with her GP and hospital, and the NHS App is the main way to see it. A family care app such as KinCarer sits alongside it and holds everything the official record doesn’t: who is doing what, what happened at the last appointment, and what the carer said this morning.

This guide compares the realistic options for UK families, explains what each is good at, and shows how to combine them without adding to your workload.

TL;DR

  • The NHS App is the starting point for the official GP record, but you can only see your parent’s record through approved family and carer access.
  • Apple Health and Patients Know Best store a person’s own records; neither is built for a whole family to share tasks and updates.
  • KinCarer is a shared care circle for relatives and paid carers: appointments, medication reminders, check-ins, notes, handover updates and documents in one place.
  • Most families do best with two layers: the NHS App for clinical records, and a care app for day-to-day coordination.
  • Check the permissions first. Your parent’s GP decides how much you can see, and consent matters.

Table of Contents

What people mean by a health record app

The phrase covers three quite different jobs, and mixing them up is why so many families end up with five apps and still can’t find the letter from last month.

  1. Clinical records. Test results, diagnoses, medicines and letters, held by the NHS. You view them; you don’t create them.
  2. Personal records. Documents and data you gather yourself, such as discharge summaries, photos of prescriptions and vaccination cards.
  3. Care coordination. Who is taking Dad to the clinic on Thursday, whether Mum took her tablets, what the district nurse said, and what your sister needs to know before she visits.

One app can rarely do all three well. Knowing which job you need done is the quickest way to choose.

The options compared

Option Best for What it holds Shared with family?
NHS App Official GP record, repeat prescriptions, appointments Coded GP record, results, letters (as the GP allows) Only through approved family and carer access
Apple Health (Health Records) One person’s own records on an iPhone Records from connected providers, plus health data Not designed for family task sharing
Patients Know Best Patients whose NHS trust uses it Letters, results and care plans from participating providers Depends on your trust
KinCarer Families coordinating an elderly parent’s care Tasks, appointments, check-ins, medication reminders, notes, handovers, documents Yes, relatives and paid carers join one care circle

The NHS App: the official record, with limits

For families in England, the NHS App is the obvious first download. The NHS explains that you can use it to view information from your GP health record, and it also handles repeat prescriptions and appointments.

What surprises many carers is that you can’t simply log in as your parent. You and your parent have to set up what the NHS calls family and carer access, sometimes called proxy access, and both of you need to be registered at the same GP practice for the linked profile to work in the app.

Three things are worth knowing before you start:

There is a separate point if your parent can no longer make decisions. Government guidance on medical disclosure to attorneys and deputies explains that a Health and Welfare Lasting Power of Attorney gives a clear route to information in the person’s best interests, but that this is different from a formal Subject Access Request. If you are in that situation, talk to the GP practice manager about what they need to see.

Remember: the NHS App covers England. If your parent lives in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, ask their GP practice which online services are available locally.

Apple Health: handy if your parent has an iPhone

Apple brought Health Records to iPhone users in the UK in 2020, letting people view and store medical records in the Health app. If your parent already uses an iPhone and is comfortable with it, it can be a neat personal store.

Its limits for families are practical rather than technical:

  • It belongs to one person and one device. There is no care circle, no task list and no handover note for a paid carer.
  • It depends on your parent being able and willing to manage it.
  • It records data; it doesn’t tell your sister what needs doing on Friday.

For a fit older person who just wants their own information in one place, that may be enough. For a family sharing responsibility, it usually isn’t.

Patients Know Best: a record from your trust

Some NHS trusts offer Patients Know Best (PKB). One NHS trust describes it as an online portal that brings patient data from different healthcare providers into a single secure personal health record. Healthwatch Brighton and Hove’s report on patient experiences describes it in similar terms, as a place to see correspondence, test results and other features.

Provider information gathered into one personal health record

Its value depends entirely on whether your parent’s hospital or specialist team uses it. If they do, it is well worth setting up for letters and results. If they don’t, you won’t find it useful. The same Healthwatch report points to uptake of messaging and tracking features often being lower than uptake of results and documents, and says clear communication about the benefits matters, which fits what many families tell us: people use what saves them a phone call.

KinCarer: the shared layer around the record

The official records tell you what clinicians know. They don’t tell you what your family knows. KinCarer is built for that second part.

Families create a care circle for an elderly parent or relative and add:

  • tasks, with someone’s name against each one
  • appointments, so nobody turns up to the wrong clinic or misses one
  • medication reminders
  • check-ins, so you can see that Mum has been visited or called
  • notes and handover updates for relatives and paid carers
  • documents, kept in cloud storage, plus emergency contacts

Relatives and carers from a home care agency can be invited into the same circle, with permissions controlled by the family, so each person sees what they need. One subscription covers everyone invited.

There is also Clara, an optional AI assistant that helps you search and summarise what is in the care circle, for example finding the date of the last review or pulling the week’s notes into a short update. Clara doesn’t give medical, legal or clinical advice, and it isn’t a substitute for the GP or pharmacist.

KinCarer is for families coordinating care. It isn’t designed for care homes, staff rota management or clinical providers, and it doesn’t replace your parent’s NHS record.

Where it fits with the NHS App

We designed KinCarer to work alongside NHS services rather than compete with them. If you want to see how the two combine, our guide to caregiving app features that work with NHS proxy access walks through it. And when it comes to the practical side of medicines, managing UK repeat prescriptions covers ordering through the GP and tracking it as a family.

A worked example: three siblings, one mum

Imagine your mum, 82, lives alone in Leeds. You live 20 minutes away, your brother is in Bristol and your sister is abroad. A home care agency sends someone twice a day.

Here is how the layers divide the work:

  • NHS App (via approved access): you order her repeat prescription and check her upcoming GP appointment.
  • Hospital letters: a PDF from the memory clinic arrives. You upload it to the care circle so your brother can read it before the next review.
  • KinCarer care circle: you add the appointment and assign your brother to join by phone. The carer logs a handover note after the morning visit. Your sister, in a different time zone, reads it over breakfast and doesn’t have to ring anyone.
  • Reminders: a medicine reminder fires at the right time, and a check-in records that it was done.

No one scrolls back through a 400-message WhatsApp thread to find the clinic’s phone number. If that thread problem sounds familiar, our look at recurring appointments that stop missed medication shows how to set routines once and let the app do the nagging.

How to choose: five questions

  1. Do you need to see clinical information, or coordinate people? Clinical: start with the NHS App. People: start with a care app.
  2. Who else is involved? If it’s just you and your parent, a personal app may be enough. If there are siblings or paid carers, you need a shared one.
  3. How comfortable is your parent with technology? If they don’t use a smartphone, the family circle can still work with you as the main user.
  4. How private does it need to be? Look for controls over who sees what. Our article on sharing medical information in UK care apps covers consent in more detail.
  5. Can you get documents out fast? In a hospital emergency, you want the medication list and contacts in seconds. See UK medical document storage for hospital handovers.

It is your parent’s information. Wherever possible, talk to them first about what will be recorded and who will see it. If they have capacity, their agreement matters. If they don’t, the question of who can act is a legal one, covered by the Lasting Power of Attorney guidance linked above, and you should ask the GP practice or a solicitor rather than guess.

A sensible rule for families: record facts and logistics (appointments, who visited, what was said), keep sensitive clinical detail to documents your parent has agreed to share, and review who is in the circle every few months.

Our perspective

We talk to families who feel they are the only one holding the whole picture in their head. Usually, the problem isn’t a lack of information. It is that the information is scattered across a GP portal, a paper letter in a handbag, a text from a sibling and a voice note from a carer.

Our perspective — overview diagram

That is why we think of a good health record app, for a family, as two things working together. The official record is the authority on the clinical side. The care circle is the place where the family and carers keep each other informed. Neither should try to be the other.

We also believe a care app should lighten the load for the person who has been doing most of the organising, not give them one more thing to administer. That means quick setup, clear permissions, and an assistant like Clara that finds and summarises rather than advises.

— KinCarer

Trying KinCarer

If you want a single place for your family and your parent’s carers to work from, you can look at KinCarer’s Family+ plan. It is priced at £9.99 per month per family or £69.99 per year per family, and one subscription covers everyone you invite. You can also read more on the KinCarer home page about how a care circle works.

If you are comparing us with other family apps, our pages on CareZone alternatives and private CaringBridge alternatives for UK carers set out the differences openly.

FAQ

Can I see my parent’s medical records in the NHS App?

Only if you have family and carer access, approved by their GP practice, and you are both registered at the same practice. The GP decides what you can see, so you may be able to book appointments but not view results. Ask the practice to explain what has been enabled.

Is there one app that does everything?

Not really. The NHS App holds the official GP record, personal apps store one person’s data, and care apps coordinate the family. Most families use the NHS App for clinical information and a care app like KinCarer for tasks, notes and handovers.

Does KinCarer replace my parent’s NHS records?

No. It doesn’t hold the official clinical record and doesn’t give medical advice. It helps your family and carers share appointments, reminders, notes and documents, so everyone works from the same information.

Can paid carers use the same app as the family?

Yes. In KinCarer, relatives and carers from a home care agency can be invited into the same care circle, and the family controls permissions. That lets a carer leave a handover note that relatives can read straight away.

Sources