NHS UK (formerly NHS Choices)

The NHS website

The NHS website (NHS.UK) was launched in 2007 and is the official website of the NHS in England.Its pages include directories of local health services, information on a wide range of conditions and treatments and accessible public health information. This includes a profile for most pharmacies in England, with information on the location, contact details, services provided, accessibility and opening hours of the pharmacy. Pharmacy contractors use the NHS Profile Manager to update their pharmacy profiles.

The site also provides comparative data about healthcare providers, to help people make informed choices about their healthcare and allows patients to provide online feedback on services. This includes feedback on pharmacies and pharmacy contractors have the ability to post responses to feedback received on their pharmacy profile.

The NHS website also includes a Medicines A-Z directory at nhs.uk/medicines which has more than two million visitors each month. The directory offers patient-friendly information on commonly-used medicines, with guidance on dosage to management of side effects. Information within the directory is aligned to that included within the product’s patient information leaflet, but often presented in a more accessible way. Many community pharmacists have found this a useful resource to refer patients to following discussions on a medicine in the pharmacy.


Visit CPE for more info on the following:

  • Pharmacy contractor’s duty to keep their profile up to date
  • Registering to edit your pharmacy profile
  • Updating your pharmacy profile
  • Pharmacy profiles for Distance Selling Pharmacies (DSPs)
  • Replying to patient feedback left on your pharmacy profile
  • Flu vaccine service finder option for patients
  • Sexual health service finder option for patients
  • FAQs

NHS Profile Manager

NHS Profile Manager is a digital tool which went live in June 2022.

Community pharmacy contractors previously updated two different NHS service information updaters:

  • The NHS website profile editor and
  • Directory of Services (DoS) Profile Updater.

The NHS Profile Manager replaces the two older information updaters, thereby, preventing contractors from having to input the same information onto two different platforms.

Find out more about profile manager