- Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 07 June 2023
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Current Status:
Answered by Michael Matheson on 20 June 2023
To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the commitment in its Care in the Digital Age: Delivery Plan 2022-23, what it has done to expand the National Clinical Data Store.
Answer
The information held in the National Clinical Data Store (NSCDS) currently contains data on vaccinations and anticipatory care plans (ReSPECT) and forms part of the patient’s clinical record. NCDS is interoperable with other core systems and supports our ambitions of ensuring that information is available to staff when and where they need it.
A "developer portal" has been deployed and released as a pilot to NHS Scotland Boards that allows IT teams to explore reading and writing data in the FHIR standard from and to the NCDS.
As part of its delivery plan in the 2023-24 financial year, the NCDS team, at NES Digital, will focus on developing storage and access capability for digital dermatology, laboratory results, genomics and medical devices data.These improvements will further support NHS Scotland to clinically audit, improve and provide safe treatment.
- Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 07 June 2023
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Current Status:
Answered by Michael Matheson on 20 June 2023
To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the commitment in its Care in the Digital Age: Delivery Plan 2022-23, what it has done to develop a national approach to the ethical, transparent consideration of adoption and implementation of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based tools, products and services.
Answer
The recently released details a set of ethical principles for the use of data across our health and care sector. These principles are applicable to the use of AI as well as the broader use of data.
Furthermore, the Data Strategy sets out our intent to work towards the safe adoption of AI tools, working to international best practice. We have also committed to developing a policy framework for adoption of AI across health and by Spring 2024.
- Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 07 June 2023
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Current Status:
Answered by Michael Matheson on 20 June 2023
To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the commitment in its Care in the Digital Age: Delivery Plan 2022-23, whether it has completed the options appraisal for a new national approach to Radiology Information Systems (RIS).
Answer
The initial discovery work identified that in addition to a new national approach to Radiology Information Systems being required, there was a range of additional improvements that could be made to diagnostic services across Scotland if a more strategically consistent approach to the provision of digital technology was taken. As such, work on a standalone approach to RIS has been paused and a new Digital Diagnostics Steering Group established to explore options for future investment in national digital infrastructure to support diagnostic services within the current fiscal framework.
- Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 07 June 2023
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Current Status:
Answered by Michael Matheson on 20 June 2023
To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the commitment in its Care in the Digital Age: Delivery Plan 2022-23, what it has done to deliver improvements to telecare services, such as greater use of proactive wellbeing calls by alarm receiving centres, to telecare users.
Answer
Our primary focus on improving telecare services is in supporting the migration of existing analogue devices to new, more sophisticated, digital devices to ensure telecare services remain fit for purpose following the UK-wide switch-over of telephone lines to a digital infrastructure.
Local Government Digital Office (LGDO) has been commissioned by Scottish Government to lead on this work and are currently taking forward a tender to develop a national digital telecare Alarm Receiving Centre solution that will support a more joined up service across HSCPs (Health and Social Care Partnership) and housing providers offering telecare in Scotland.
In addition, we continue to explore the use of Proactive Telecare in Scotland to deliver a more tailored and preventative service that aims to anticipate and prevent crises and support wellbeing and resilience. This approach has been trialled on a small scale across two phases for which an . Plans are currently underway to initiate a third phase of Proactive Telecare during 2023-24, reaching more citizens, to fully evaluate the potential and scope for Proactive Telecare as a nationally recommended approach.
- Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 07 June 2023
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Current Status:
Answered by Michael Matheson on 20 June 2023
To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the commitment in its Care in the Digital Age: Delivery Plan 2022-23, what progress has been made to provide health boards with the ability to offer new, more advanced systems for GP practices through the national GP IT programme.
Answer
Through continued investment in the national ‘GP IT’ re-provisioning programme, Health Boards will have the ability to offer new and advanced, modernised systems for General Practice in Scotland. This dedicated resource supports the integration of primary, community and social care and facilitates increased standardisation of GP IT and integration into the wider eHealth infrastructure.
Cegedim (who offer the Vision product) passed Accreditation to allow rollout of the new Vision system in March 2022. Since July 2022, the migration process has been underway, with over 100 practices now on the new Managed Services across four health boards (NHS Tayside, Lanarkshire, Lothian and Grampian).
The new system provides a number of improvements for GPs and practices in relation to appointments, prescribing, connectivity to systems, shared community care and more robust centralised hosting.
- Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 07 June 2023
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Current Status:
Answered by Michael Matheson on 20 June 2023
To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the commitment in its Care in the Digital Age: Delivery Plan 2022-23, what it has done to develop an effective partnership model, bringing together health and care practitioners, industry, and academia to collaborate to solve key demand-led challenges and support economic growth for Scotland.
Answer
The Scottish Government has developed, in partnership with the NHS, the Accelerated National Innovation Adoption (ANIA) pathway and Innovation Design Authority (IDA). They provide a once for Scotland approach to the identification, assessment, and accelerated adoption of innovative technologies within the NHS. The IDA brings together key Scottish Government and NHS in Scotland decision makers to collectively agree priorities and approve high impact innovations for accelerated national adoption. ANIA harnesses the expertise and capabilities of our national Health Boards to support decision making and overcome barriers to adoption. Innovations are assessed against impact on health outcomes, patient experience, workforce, financial sustainability, and carbon reduction.
ANIA is fed by the end-to-end innovation pathway supported from the Office of the Chief Scientist (Health), and delivered in partnership with the NHS, academia, and industry. This includes translational research, our three regional NHS Innovation Hubs, Open Innovation Competitions, and innovation fellowships.
- Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 07 June 2023
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Current Status:
Answered by Michael Matheson on 20 June 2023
To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the commitment in its Care in the Digital Age: Delivery Plan 2022-23, whether it has further developed tools to support safer staffing and more flexible workforce arrangements.
Answer
There are a range of different digital tools that already support, or have the potential to support, safer staffing and more flexible working arrangements – by its very nature the use of digital enables new ways of working. This includes, for example, the provision by Health Boards of laptops and remote login access to a number of staff, the roll-out across NHS Scotland of Microsoft Teams and the wider M365 platform that supports flexible communication and collaboration across organisational boundaries, development of decision support tools to support clinical decision making and use of patient-facing tools such as Near Me that do not require staff to remain in a fixed location. Working with the likes of NHS National Services Scotland, we continue to support the development and implementation of further tools in support of the health and social care workforce. This includes the roll out of new GP IT systems, which will better support multi-disciplinary team working in community settings, tools to support better scheduling of appointments and utilisation of theatre and workforce capacity, and rostering tools to better support strategic workforce planning.
- Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 07 June 2023
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Current Status:
Answered by Michael Matheson on 20 June 2023
To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the commitment in its Care in the Digital Age: Delivery Plan 2022-23, what it has done to develop an approach to improving the quality and consistency of protected characteristic demographic data.
Answer
The recently released sets out our intent to improve the capture, storage and use of protected characteristics data. The Scottish Government is currently exploring the range of methods to achieve the commitment made in both the Delivery Plan and Data Strategy, including the significant opportunities presented by the new CHI system that is due to be operational in autumn of this year.
- Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 07 June 2023
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Current Status:
Answered by Michael Matheson on 20 June 2023
To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the commitment in its Care in the Digital Age: Delivery Plan 2022-23, whether it has begun the roll-out of the Scottish Wide Area Network (SWAN).
Answer
The Scottish Wide Area Network has been widely used across all of the NHS and much of the rest of the public sector in Scotland since 2014. With the contract coming to an end, procurement was commenced and the contract for the ongoing delivery of SWAN was awarded to BT on 12th April 2023 for 6 years. Work is now underway to transition organisations from the incumbent supplier to the new BT-supported network from August 2023 (with planned roll out of new service still scheduled for 2026).
- Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 07 June 2023
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Current Status:
Answered by Michael Matheson on 20 June 2023
To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the commitment in its Care in the Digital Age: Delivery Plan 2022-23, whether it has improved links between fire safety and telecare services, including publication of new guidance, clarifying the responsibilities of telecare services in relation to the new legislation, developing guidance and supporting good practice in implementation.
Answer
Yes. The Scottish Government worked collaboratively with Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and other key partners to develop new guidance for telecare on the fire legislation. This can be found here -
