NHS Copilot Starter Kit
Twelve copy-and-paste prompts for Copilot Chat on NHS.net Connect — and the rules that keep you on the right side of the acceptable-use policy.
General information for GP partners, not legal advice. This guide is independent — not endorsed by, or affiliated with, NHS England or Microsoft.
What you already have
Most partners do not know they already have a serious AI assistant included with NHSmail at no additional cost. Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat is available to NHS.net Connect usersas part of their base licence. It is a web-grounded AI chat protected by Microsoft 365's enterprise data protection and can work with files you deliberately upload. There is normally nothing for the practice to buy or install before getting started.
Is Copilot just ChatGPT inside Microsoft 365?
Not quite. Copilot is a Microsoft product. It can use AI models from OpenAI and other providers, but Microsoft adds the account, security, permissions, web search and Microsoft 365 connections around them. Think of the AI model as the engine and Copilot as the whole vehicle. Your NHS account and Copilot licence determine what it can access and which safeguards apply.
£0
Cost to your practice
Included for NHS.net Connect users
UK NHS tenant
Where prompts are stored
180-day retention, auditable
505,000
Staff getting full Copilot
announced June 2026, expected by October 2026
One boundary worth understanding from the start: the standard Copilot Chat experience on NHS.net Connect is not a licence to search your whole NHSmail environment. For day-to-day use, give it only the material it needs by pasting text or deliberately uploading a file. Licensed Microsoft 365 Copilot is different: it can work across Microsoft 365 content the user already has permission to access.
The landscape is about to shift. NHS England announced on 8 June 2026 that the full Microsoft 365 Copilot — the version embedded in Word, Excel and Outlook — will be rolled out to 505,000 NHS staff, expected by October 2026. The timing for GP practices has not been confirmed. Which makes the free Copilot Chat the tool to learn on now: the prompting habits you build in the chat carry straight over when the embedded version arrives.
Which Copilot do you have?
Seeing the word “Copilot” does not tell you which product or licence is active. This short check helps distinguish the included Copilot Chat from licensed Microsoft 365 Copilot and points you towards the safest next step.
One-minute Copilot check
Answer three questions to identify the version you are most likely using and what to do next.
Your answers stay on this page. Nothing is stored, sent or shared, and refreshing the page clears them.
Your result (0 of 3 answered)
Answer all three questions to see your likely Copilot version.
This is a practical indicator, not a licence check. Microsoft and NHS tenant features can change; your Local Administrator can confirm the licence and policies assigned to your account.
The rules first
Before the prompts, the policy. NHSmail's Acceptable Use Policy (v1.3, February 2026) draws one line, and it is a clear one.
The acceptable-use line, verbatim
Copilot “can be used for all administrative and business support purposes, including those involving sensitive information, such as Clinical Administration activities with sensitive information” but “must not be used to make clinical decisions or in relation to any activity requiring clinical judgement”.
The policy also sets three standing obligations:
- Check before use — outputs must be checked by the member of staff before use.
- Label AI content — AI-generated content should be labelled as such.
- Local policy first— your own organisation's local policy takes precedence.
On data handling: prompts and responses are stored at rest within the UK NHS tenant, with a 180-day retention period, and are auditable. Processing is routed to the UK and EU first — but NHS England's own assessment accepts that some processing, for example web-search queries, may take place outside the UK and EU. The honest one-liner: UK-stored, mostly UK-processed, not UK-guaranteed.
The practical reading for a partner: Copilot Chat is fine for admin and business work — minutes, rotas, adverts, letters, business cases — and never for anything requiring clinical judgement. If in doubt, treat it as a brilliant administrator, not a clinician. The full detail is in the NHSmail introduction to Copilot Chat and the acceptable-use policy itself.
Getting set up
Three steps, two minutes:
- Open m365.cloud.microsoft/chat — or find Copilot in the app launcher in NHSmail webmail.
- Sign in with your nhs.net account. Signing in is what puts you inside the NHS tenant, with enterprise data protection switched on.
- Pin the tab. It earns a permanent place next to your clinical system.
Prefer talking to typing? The microphone in the Copilot Chat prompt box, and Dictate in Word and Outlook, are free to use now — dictate the brief rather than typing it. Real-time voice conversation with Copilot needs a paid licence, so ignore anything that asks you to upgrade for it.
Three habits that change the results
The gap between a useless answer and a genuinely time-saving one is rarely the tool. It is these three habits:
- Give it a role and context before the task. An assistant that knows it is working for the managing partner of an English GP practice writes very differently from one guessing at a generic office. That is exactly what prompts 1 and 2 below do — start every session with one of them.
- Give it the source, don't just refer to it. In the standard Copilot Chat experience, “Summarise the ICB letter” may not give it the material you mean. Paste the text or deliberately upload the document so you control what it reads.
- Verify before you use, and label AI-assisted work. These are not style preferences — they are the acceptable-use obligations from the section above. Nothing Copilot writes should leave the practice unchecked.
Download the free Practice Copilot Pack
Keep the useful parts of this guide beside you. The printable pack brings the version check, safety rules, prompt formula, all twelve prompts and a blank prompt brief into one practical PDF.
Free toolkit
Practice Copilot Pack
- • 18 printable A4 pages
- • Copilot Chat and Microsoft 365 comparison
- • All twelve prompts with safety checks
- • Blank prompt brief for your own tasks
No signup. No charge. Print it, annotate it or share it with your practice team.
Build a safe prompt
Use this when none of the ready-made prompts quite fits. Describe the outcome without entering real names, identifiers or confidential practice information; the builder will add a clear brief, verification steps and the clinical-judgement boundary.
Safe prompt builder
Describe the job, not the real case. The builder adds context, verification steps and the clinical-judgement boundary automatically.
Nothing is stored or sent. Do not enter patient names, NHS numbers, staff details or confidential practice information here.
Complete the short form to create a reusable, review-ready prompt.
The twelve prompts
Copy a prompt, open Copilot Chat, paste it in, and replace anything in [square brackets] with your own detail. Each card also shows what to prepare, what to leave out and what a person must check before the output is used.
Getting started
Make Copilot ask first
Use it for: any task where you would normally have to write a long brief
Prepare first
The outcome, audience, deadline, preferred format and any source you expect it to use.
Do not include
Patient or staff identifiers, clinical details, or confidential material that is not necessary to frame the task.
Check before use
Its questions cover purpose, audience, source material, deadline and who will review the result.
Set the scene for the whole chat
Use it for: the first message of any working session
Prepare first
Approximate practice size, relevant staff groups, the task audience and any local policy that matters.
Do not include
Names, NHS numbers, identifiable cases or exact confidential figures unless the later task genuinely requires them.
Check before use
It uses English general-practice terminology and flags anything that needs a current authoritative source.
Meetings
Minutes from rough notes
Use it for: turning scribbles into minutes in one pass
Prepare first
Attendees, apologies, rough notes, confirmed decisions, action owners and genuine deadlines.
Do not include
Identifiable patient, complaint or significant-event details; use the minimum information needed for the record.
Check before use
Attendance, decisions, action owners and dates against the original notes before the minutes are circulated.
An agenda that runs to time
Use it for: the monthly partners' meeting
Prepare first
Meeting length, standing items, decisions needed, paper owners and any immovable deadlines.
Do not include
Identifiable complaint, patient or staff-case details in agenda titles or papers sent more widely than necessary.
Check before use
The timings add up, decision items come early, and every paper or preparation task has an owner.
Staff and HR
A job advert worth applying to
Use it for: vacancies you need filled quickly
Prepare first
Approved role, hours, pay range, location, responsibilities, application route and closing date.
Do not include
Invented benefits, discriminatory criteria, unapproved pay promises or a person's private contact details.
Check before use
Hours, pay, duties and dates are accurate, essential criteria are defensible, and the final advert has HR approval.
A policy first draft
Use it for: getting a policy from blank page to reviewable
Prepare first
The current local policy, named owner, review cycle and the authoritative legal or NHS sources to follow.
Do not include
Real incident details, unsupported legal wording or claims that a draft has already been approved.
Check before use
Sources are current, responsibilities match real workflows, and the appropriate governance lead signs it off.
Patient communications
Plain-English rewrite
Use it for: announcements, posters and website updates
Prepare first
Approved facts, the action patients should take, relevant dates and the correct contact route.
Do not include
Patient information, internal discussion, unsupported promises or jargon that has not been explained.
Check before use
Every fact, date, number and action remains correct; test the reading level and the text-message character count.
A complaint acknowledgement with the right tone
Use it for: the first response, before the clinical account is ready
Prepare first
An anonymised summary, the concerns being acknowledged, the response process and a realistic next-contact date.
Do not include
Names, NHS numbers, unnecessary identifiers, a clinical explanation, findings not yet established or promises outside policy.
Check before use
Tone, facts and timescales; ensure the responsible GP completes clinical sections and an authorised person reviews the letter.
Documents and data
Digest a long document
Use it for: contract updates, ICB papers, anything over ten pages
Prepare first
The complete current document and the practice question you need the summary to answer.
Do not include
Unrelated attachments or confidential information that is not needed to understand the document.
Check before use
Figures, dates, deadlines and section references against the source, including material the summary may have omitted.
The Excel formula, explained
Use it for: rotas, finance sheets and search results you manage in Excel
Prepare first
The sheet layout, relevant cell ranges, a dummy example and the result you expect for that example.
Do not include
Patient-identifiable rows, real payroll details or a full workbook when a small fictional example is enough.
Check before use
Test known examples, blank cells and copied rows; verify ranges, absolute references and any locale-specific separators.
Planning and compliance
An outline business case
Use it for: anything you need the partnership to agree to
Prepare first
The problem, realistic options, cost assumptions, expected benefit, timescale and decision criteria.
Do not include
Identifiable staff or patient data, invented supplier prices, unsupported savings or a pre-decided recommendation.
Check before use
Arithmetic, assumptions, sources, risks and conflicts of interest; leave the final recommendation to the partners.
A CQC preparation checklist
Use it for: getting ahead of an assessment
Prepare first
The current CQC framework, your evidence map, named owners and the date each item was last reviewed.
Do not include
Fabricated evidence, unsupported claims of compliance or identifiable examples where anonymised evidence will do.
Check before use
Every quality statement is current, cited evidence actually exists, and gaps have an owner and completion date.
What's next
This starter set covers the admin foundations — meetings, staff, patient communications, documents, planning. Once these twelve feel routine, you will start spotting your own uses, and that is the point: the kit is a way in, not a ceiling.
A fuller prompt library for partners — contract work, finance, QOF planning, HR deep-dives — is in the works. New prompts are shared first through The Partner Brief, the free email briefing; the signup is at the bottom of this page.
Copilot is one tool, and this kit is about the admin side of it. For the wider picture on AI in general practice — the foundations, using it safely, the consultation room, and practice operations — I have written six free modules at Learning Together on aryash.pro. Plain English, no certification, no charge.
The safe way to think about it
Copilot Chat is a capable administrator who never gets tired, never minds redrafting, and must never make clinical judgements. Keep it on the business side of the practice, check everything before it leaves the building, and it will quietly hand you hours back every week.
Sources and further reading
- NHSmail support: introduction to M365 Copilot Chat
- NHSmail support: M365 Copilot acceptable use policy (v1.3, February 2026)
- NHS England: 500,000 NHS staff to get new artificial intelligence tools (8 June 2026)
- Microsoft Learn: data, privacy and security for Microsoft 365 Copilot
Last reviewed: 9 August 2026. All links checked at that date.
This guide is independent — not endorsed by, or affiliated with, NHS England or Microsoft. General information for GP partners, not legal advice.