As part of the health service’s 10-year plan, the NHS App is set to become the entry point to an online hospital that, by 2027, will start connecting patients digitally to expert clinicians anywhere in England.
Called NHS Online, the digital health service is being designed so patients can be seen faster and to enable NHS clinicians to triage them via the NHS App. NHS England said patients will also be able to book scans at local community diagnostic centres.
Since it was introduced in 2019, millions of patients have used the NHS App to manage their care. Through enhanced app functionality, when a patient has an appointment with their GP, they will have the option of being referred to the online hospital for their specialist care. They will then be able to book directly through the NHS App and have the option to see specialists from around the country online, without leaving their home or having to wait longer for a face-to-face appointment.
If a patient needs a scan, test or procedure, NHS England said the app will enable them to book this at a time that suits them at a community diagnostic centre close to home. They will be able to track their prescriptions and get advice on managing their condition without needing to travel.
NHS England said NHS Online will improve patient waiting times, delivering the equivalent of up to 8.5 million appointments and assessments in its first three years – four times more than an average trust – while enhancing patient choice and control over their care.
The service will initially be rolled out to cover a small number of planned treatment areas with the longest waits. Over time, NHS England said it will expand to more treatment areas.
The NHS 10-year health plan aims to shift the health service from analogue to digital, using technology to help deliver patient services.
The service builds on and scales the artificial intelligence (AI) and remote monitoring already in use across the NHS.
Discussing the new service, Jim Mackey, NHS chief executive, said: “The NHS can, must and will move forward to match other sectors in offering digital services that make services as personalised, convenient and flexible as possible for both staff and patients.”
Patients who choose to receive their treatment through the online hospital will benefit from us industrialising the latest technology and innovations, while the increased capacity will help to cut demand and slash waiting times Jim Mackey, NHS
Mackey described NHS Online as a huge step forward for the health service, which he said would deliver millions more appointments by the end of the decade and offer a real alternative for patients.
“Patients who choose to receive their treatment through the online hospital will benefit from us industrialising the latest technology and innovations, while the increased capacity will help to cut demand and slash waiting times,” he added.
Before NHS Online goes live, the NHS said it will learn from existing research on patient experience of online care over the past five years and build this into the programme as it develops. The programme is being developed with a commitment to patient partnership in design and delivery.
Jeanette Dickson, chair of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, said: “This is a novel and potentially game-changing way of improving equity and speed of access to NHS services, which would reduce health inequalities.
“Obviously, we need to make sure that those who aren’t digitally enabled are not penalised in any way, but if this approach can be delivered safely and effectively, freeing up capacity in bricks and mortar hospitals at the same time, then it could potentially be a really good thing.”
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Telefónica has announced that its strategy to transform network processes through automation and artificial intelligence (AI) has “far exceeded” initial expectations.
For Telefónica, network autonomy is conceived as a path that advances from fully manual environments to fully autonomous networks, classified in levels 0 to 5. At their highest levels, networks are capable of self-learning, span multiple domains, and possess self-configuration, self-optimisation and self-healing capabilities. This is said to ensure “the highest levels” of efficiency and reliability.
Telefónica recurrently measures the evolution of autonomy in each principal network domain – fixed access, mobile access, transport, IP, core and telco cloud – as well as in what it calls a number of key processes such as planning, testing, deployment and operations. In November 2025, the operator revealed a roadmap to reach an average level of autonomy of 3.75 by 2028, and reach level 4 by 2030.
The resulting weighted indicator reflects the actual maturity of each of the operations in the countries in which it operates, and shows how each country is progressing towards more predictive, efficient and self-sufficient operating models. The group’s global level consolidates the progress of the operations in a standardised way, offering a unified view of Telefónica’s progress towards autonomous maturity.
Telefónica says it finished 2025 with a total of 12 Level 4 use cases, a category it says already reflects a “very advanced” level in the development of autonomous networks and thus accelerates its transformation process. Level 4 use cases are defined as those capable of acting autonomously based on the intention transmitted by a human and are essential to raise the global average of autonomy.
In addition, it noted that what seemed to be a long-term journey to reach its objectives has accelerated significantly thanks to the strong commitment of the operations teams of Telefónica Spain, O2 Germany and Vivo (Brazil). And thanks to the joint effort of the three operators, Telefónica closed 2025 with 12 Level 4 use cases, all of them fully operational. Among these is the autonomous creation of network capacity with Vivo’s AI (Fractal), and the operator is also deploying autonomous detection and resolution on Vivo’s virtualised 5G Core and autonomous creation of client fibre capacity (Fractal II).
It is also creating a digital twin for the transport network (NetOptimizer) from O2 Germany and Intelligent planning for the O2 Germany transmission network. The Germany subsidiary is also deploying automation for operations analytics, ticketing and diagnostics though a virtual assistant, and automation is part of an in-service software change of Core 5G (InService Software Upgrade).
An Intelligent multi-domain correlation at the customer level is offering proactive and automated detection of impact, anomalies and root cause in 4G/5G at O2 Germany.
Work in Spain encompasses autonomous detection and resolution of weaknesses in Telefónica España’s IP network and Telefónica Spain’s intelligent planning for the deployment of customer fibre (Smart Capex). Other projects include NetCheck for error-free software changes and intelligent configuration of Telefónica España’s IP network.
Overall, Telefónica regards the achievement of 12 Level 4 use cases as consolidating the group’s position as a European benchmark in network automation and demonstrating that “the combination of technology, talent and focus is the right way to move towards an autonomous network”.
Usually, when you see a feel-good story about finding a lost dog, you don’t immediately react with fear and revulsion. But that was indeed the case in response to a Super Bowl commercial from Amazon-owned security camera company Ring. There’s now a group offering to dole out a $10,000 bounty to wrest back control of the user data Ring controls.
The ad showed off a new feature from Ring called Search Party. It uses a network of Ring cameras to scour a neighborhood for signs of lost dogs. But as the details of a leaked internal Ring email reported by 404 Media revealed, the service could eventually be used to find other animals and people as well.
The commercial was met largely with widespread criticism across social media and the tech press, which called out Search Party for essentially being a thinly-veiled neighborhood surveillance dragnet. People are even publicly destroying their Ring cameras. In response, Ring immediately canceled its partnership with the controversial AI surveillance company Flock. Ring CEO Jamie Siminoff has been on something of an apology tour since the Super Bowl commercial aired. (A Ring spokesperson acknowledged our request for comment and says the company will provide one shortly; we’ll update this story when we hear back.)
The Fulu Foundation, a group founded by repair advocate and YouTuber Louis Rossmann, pays out bounties to people who can remove user-hostile features on connected devices. The nonprofit saw this pushback as a moment of opportunity for people to take back control of their devices.
“It’s been an interesting moment for people to grasp exactly the trade-off that they have had to accept when they installed these security doorbell cameras,” says Fulu cofounder Kevin O’Reilly. “People who install security cameras are looking for more security, not less. At the end of the day, control is at the heart of security. If we don’t control our data, we don’t control our devices.”
Fulu’s latest bounty is for Ring’s video doorbell cameras, meant to encourage hackers and tinkerers to disable software features that require the devices to send data to Amazon. The reward is a potential payout of $10,000 or more.
To score the bounty, the winner will have to adhere to a few requirements designed to make sure the hardware itself stays in working order. After modifications, the device must be able to work with a local PC or server, and be capable of halting data sent to Amazon servers or requiring a connection to other Amazon hardware. All of this must be done without disabling on-device hardware features like motion detecting and color night vision. The job also has to be accomplishable with “readily available and inexpensive tooling” and “instructions that a moderately technical user could carry out” in less than an hour.
“This needs to be a weekend project,” O’Reilly says, “where someone who was creeped out by a commercial and wants to take back control can take care of it, get it done, and be able to sleep soundly at night knowing that they’re the only ones who can see their footage.”
The first person to accomplish all of that with a Ring camera—and prove they can do it—gets the money. The reward starts at $10,000, but will likely grow as donors contribute more money (it’s already sitting closer to $11,000 as of publication). On top of that, Fulu will award up to an additional $10,000 to match donations for the winner.
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