Check your medical symptoms with the new Android NHS Direct app

NHS Direct, the telephone and online health support service, is now available as an app for Android smartphones.

The app brings together all 37 of NHS Direct's online symptom checkers along with detailed information about treatment and other health issues.

The NHS Direct app will advise people if they need to visit a GP, go to a walk-in-centre or look after themselves at home. Users can also save medical advice to their device. There is also an option to arrange a call-back from an NHS Direct nurse advisor.

Roger Donald, associate director of Multichannel, NHS Direct, adds: "The NHS Direct app has been developed in response to the popularity of this new mobile channel and to the specific needs of the growing number of patients who prefer to access health advice online.

"Patients can access rapid and convenient health advice through the app with the reassurance that the information is from a trusted source. Our online health and symptom checkers are already extremely popular and we hope making them mobile we will benefit more people and contribute to helping take pressure off other local NHS services."

The Android version of the app is available to download free now. A version for iPhone will be available in June.