The British National Formulary (BNF) and the British National Formulary for children (BNFC) have launched a new faster and easily accessible app for healthcare professionals.

Designed to be used on iOS and Android platforms, the new app will be most beneficial for prescribers, pharmacists, and other health and social care professionals.

The app provides details of the medicines licensed in the UK, as well as information about how each medicine should be prescribed, along with their side-effects, contra-indications and doses.

The new portable app can be used by users anytime and anywhere, even without being connected to the internet.

The BNF and BNFC’s authoritative guidance is available at the point of care in a digital format to address the requirements of health and social care professionals.

With the launch of the new app, the existing National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) BNF app will be withdrawn later this year.

NICE will no longer update its app in order to enable users to easily migrate to the new one.

NICE Centre for Guidelines director Mark Baker said: "There are over 50,000 regular users of the current NICE version of the BNF app so it is imperative that the transition to the new improved app runs as smoothly as possible.

"To make sure that happens we’ll be reminding users via a banner displayed at the top of each page of the current app that from 13 July it will no longer be updated and will be completely withdrawn later this year.

"Users will be signposted to information on the NICE website about the new app, including how to obtain it and the benefits it offers."