PATIENTS are being urged to put their faith in mobile ‘apps’ as NHS bosses issue their first major plea of 2017 to avoid East Lancashire’s accident and emergency department.

But East Lancashire Patients Voice (ELPV) is worried the initiative, unveiled by health service reformers, could leave elderly or poorer patients feeling like second-class citizens and only increase demand.

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Before the weekend hospital chiefs insisted only people with ‘life-threatening emergencies’ should go to A&E at Royal Blackburn Hospital.

Just hours later the new Healthier Lancashire and South Cumbria (HLSC) transformation team, tasked with shaving £572million from health budgets before 2020, had begun promoting an ‘apps’ guide for common medical conditions.

Russ McLean, chairman of ELPV, said: “There has been no patient engagement around this work. While I have no doubt self-care is the way forward I’m not altogether sure that apps can help everyone in East Lancashire.

“We have got some of the highest levels of deprivation in the country and also some of the oldest populations, people who are not always comfortable with apps.

“There are certain people who are going to be left isolated by this approach.”

ORCHA (Organisation for the Review of Care and Health Apps) is the platform being recommended as a guide to the estimated 165,000 technology sites on the market.

County doctors have said apps recommended by the ORCHA system have been impartially rated by clinicians, so would-be patients can make ‘informed decisions’ on which to use.

The HLSC team said the online medical guide is part of their efforts to ‘find new ways of helping people to care for their own health for as long as they can’ - while ‘saving money along the way’.

Dr Amanda Thornton, Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust’s clinical director, for the HLSC, said: “This is hugely exciting for the people of Lancashire as well as the clinicians who support them.

“Health and care apps can offer a huge benefit to patients, really empowering them to manage and improve their health.

“There is a huge choice out there, so ORCHA really helps people to understand which are the best.”