Why continuous discovery matters
Building and improving digital health services is not a one-off activity. Patients and their needs evolve, expectations change and services continue to grow long after they go live.
This means that learning about users cannot be limited to the discovery phase of a project. To make informed decisions, organisations need a continuous view of how services are performing, where users are experiencing friction and where future investment could deliver the greatest benefit.
Within the NHS Wales App team, we've adopted a continuous discovery approach to help us do exactly that.
Moving beyond assumptions
Every product team makes assumptions. We make assumptions about what patients need, which features are working well and where the biggest opportunities for improvement lie.
Continuous discovery helps us test those assumptions with evidence.
Through a combination of in-app intercept surveys, behavioural analytics and user research, we're building a richer picture of how patients use the NHS Wales App in their daily lives. Rather than waiting for issues to emerge through complaints or service performance measures, we're creating regular opportunities to learn directly from users.
This allows us to make decisions based on patient experience, not opinion.
Monitoring how services perform over time
One of the benefits of continuous discovery is the ability to establish measurable baselines for user experience.
Since April 2026, we have been running short in-app surveys across a range of journeys, including:
- ordering repeat prescriptions
- booking GP appointments
- viewing test results
- waiting list referrals
- hospital appointments
- using the app in Welsh
These surveys help us understand two important questions:
- does the service meet users' needs?
- is it easy to use?
The resulting scores provide a benchmark that can be tracked over time. As features evolve, we can measure whether changes improve the patient experience, have no impact, or introduce new problems.
This moves conversations away from assumptions and towards evidence-based improvement.
Understanding what the numbers cannot tell us
Performance metrics are important, but they don't explain why something is happening.
The most valuable insights often come from the comments patients leave alongside survey responses.
For example, repeat prescription ordering achieved one of the highest satisfaction scores across the app. At first glance, this suggests a successful service. However, when we looked at patient feedback more closely, a different story emerged.
Patients consistently told us that ordering medication was straightforward, but many were unsure what happened afterwards.
They described uncertainty about whether prescriptions had been approved, frustration when requests were rejected without explanation and a lack of visibility over when medication would be ready to collect.
This insight changes the nature of the problem. The challenge is not simply making ordering easier but to improve the end-to-end prescription experience, including the period between ordering and collection.
Without continuous discovery, that opportunity may have remained hidden.
Image showing the steps in the 'Order a repeat prescription' journey, with opportunities for improvement and pain points mapped beneath.
Understanding who benefits most
Continuous discovery also helps us understand the value of digital services for different groups of patients.
Feedback from repeat prescription users highlighted benefits for older people, disabled people and neurodivergent people.
Some described avoiding unnecessary travel, reducing reliance on phone calls and finding it easier to manage their healthcare independently.
These findings strengthen our understanding of the wider impact of the NHS Wales App beyond transaction completion rates or user numbers alone.
They help demonstrate how digital services can improve accessibility and support greater independence for patients.
Informing future priorities
Continuous discovery is not only about improving existing services. It also helps shape future work.
Feedback gathered through surveys about waiting list referrals and hospital appointments has generated important questions about:
- the accuracy and completeness of appointment information
- the information patients need while waiting for care
- how much control patients want over managing appointments
- the best channels for communicating updates
If we plan to work on waiting list referrals and hospital appointments in future, these questions have already helped us identify where further research, service design and investment may be needed.
In this way, continuous discovery provides an evidence base and strong starting point for future decisions.
Building a culture of learning
Perhaps the greatest value of continuous discovery is that it creates a culture of ongoing learning.
Rather than treating research as a phase that ends when a service launches, it becomes an integral part of managing and improving the service throughout its lifecycle.
For the NHS Wales App, this means we can:
- monitor user experience over time
- identify emerging issues earlier
- understand patient behaviour and needs
- measure the impact of improvements
- demonstrate value and benefits
- make more informed decisions about future priorities
Continuous discovery does not provide all the answers. However, it gives us a reliable way to keep asking the right questions and finding evidence to guide our decisions.
As the NHS Wales App continues to grow, this approach will help us make sure that future improvements are shaped by patient needs, informed by real-world experience and focused on delivering meaningful outcomes for the people who use the service.