Menstrual health among priorities for NHS online hospital
- 6 January 2026
- Menopause and menstrual issues will be among the priorities for the NHS’s new online hospital when it launches in 2027
- The NHS has selected nine common conditions which will be the first to be treated by the NHS Online Service
- NHS Online is expected to deliver the equivalent of up to 8.5 million virtual appointments and assessments in its first three years
Women’s health issues will be among the priorities for the NHS’s online hospital which is expected to launch in 2027.
Menopause and menstrual problems which may be a sign of endometriosis or fibroids, are among the nine common conditions which will be the first to be treated by the NHS Online Service, which was launched by prime minister Sir Keir Starmer in September 2025.
Dr Sue Mann, national clinical director in Women’s Health at NHS England, said: “Menstrual problems, that can be caused by conditions such as endometriosis or fibroids, or menopause symptoms can affect every part of a woman’s life, so it’s essential that the NHS provides better access to effective treatments more quickly.
“NHS Online will make it easier for women to see a consultant from their own home without having to face a long wait for an in-person appointment, meaning they can get on with their daily lives.”
The other conditions are glaucoma, medical retina (including age-related macular degeneration), cataracts, inflammatory bowel disease, iron deficiency anaemia, prostate enlargement and raised prostate-specific antigen (PSA).
Wes Streeting, health secretary, said: “We’ve already made big changes in the NHS, but building a health service that’s fit for the future requires more than just evolution – it demands revolution.
“NHS Online will make accessing healthcare as simple as ordering a cab or a takeaway – fundamentally changing how people interact with the NHS for generations to come.
“People with the nine conditions we’re announcing today face some of the longest waits, ensuring they’re seen on time again as we shift the NHS from analogue to digital.”
The NHS online hospital is intended to transform how healthcare is delivered by allowing patients to be triaged quickly through the NHS App, speak to doctors via video consultation, and be monitored at home, saving unnecessary trips to hospital.
It is expected to deliver the equivalent of up to 8.5 million virtual appointments and assessments in its first three years – four times more than an average NHS trust.
Professor Stella Vig, national clinical director for elective care at NHSE, said: “The NHS’s new online hospital will see a huge shift in the way we deliver care, giving patients the option to have an online appointment with a specialist anywhere in England.”
The service will initially build and scale existing innovations, such as digital prescriptions and online test results. Tests, scans or procedures will continue to take place at healthcare sites, while clinicians will be able to review notes remotely.
Moorfields Eye Hospital in London has introduced a single point of access system for eye condition referrals, providing an online service linking GPs and optometrists with eye specialists.
Peter Thomas, director of digital development and consultant ophthalmologist at Moorfields Eye Hospital, said: “With our single point of access service, we’ve been defining how a virtual hospital can support better eye care.
“We’ve used technology to improve the capability and efficiency of the system, and which allows clinicians in the community and hospital services to work more closely together to streamline care.”
2 Comments
The phrase “menstrual problems” when talking about endometriosis is not just medically inaccurate, it is emblematic of how women’s health continues to be trivialised. Conditions such as endometriosis are routinely reduced to reproductive inconvenience, when in reality they represent complex, systemic disease.
Endometriosis is a full-body inflammatory condition that can affect multiple organs, including the bowel, brain, lungs, diaphragm and nervous system. Its biological markers share similarities with cancer, particularly in how the disease invades tissue, triggers chronic inflammation and damages organs throughout the body. Despite this, endometriosis is still largely siloed as a gynaecological issue, when it should instead be treated as a multi-system disease requiring coordinated, multidisciplinary care.
What is urgently needed is not simply greater awareness or an online consultation to just be put on another list, but meaningful structural change. This includes more genuinely specialised clinicians within the NHS, particularly as the majority of recognised endometriosis specialists in the UK currently operate in the private sector. It also means ensuring that clinicians are properly trained to accurately identify endometriosis via TVUS and MRI, rather than defaulting to delayed diagnoses and dismissive assessments.
It is also critical to dispel the persistent myth that hysterectomy or ovary removal “cures” endometriosis. Endometriosis lesions can and do exist outside the reproductive organs, and the disease can continue to progress even in the absence of a uterus or ovaries. Framing these irreversible surgeries as definitive solutions not only misrepresents the science, but often leaves patients without appropriate long-term follow-up care. Similarly, laparoscopic excision surgery, frequently described as “non-invasive”, is anything but minor. Excision involves the surgical removal of diseased tissue and, in many cases, portions of affected organs such as the bowel, bladder, or diaphragm. Recovery can take six months or longer, yet patients are routinely advised on a two week recovery time frame, a timeline that bears no relation to the physiological reality of healing from complex internal surgery. This disconnect between clinical language and lived experience further exemplifies how endometriosis care continues to minimise both the severity of the disease and the ongoing support patients require.
In the absence of adequate services, thousands of people living with endometriosis have been forced to become their own experts. Many spend years educating themselves, keeping pace with the latest research and navigating a fragmented healthcare system, often knowing more about their condition than the consultant they have waited 18 months+ to see. To then be given a wildly different explanation from each successive specialist is not only confusing, but deeply exhausting and infuriating.
Endometriosis is not a “menstrual problem.” It is a serious, life-altering disease. Treating it as anything less perpetuates harm and the cost of that minimisation is borne entirely by patients.
Hi Laura, point taken but the online hospital will focus on menstrual problems which could potentially indicate endometriosis or fibroids and is not calling endo itself a menstrual problem. The idea is that women experiencing menstrual issues will be able to get referred to a specialist more quickly for diagnosis. I totally agree that structural change and more clinicians will be needed for the online hospital to work effectively.
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