Questions and answers

Chamber and committees

Questions and answers

Parliamentary questions can be asked by any MSP to the Scottish Government or the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. The questions provide a means for ��˿�� to get factual and statistical information.

Written questions must be answered within 10 working days (20 working days during recess)
Other questions such as Topical, Portfolio, General and First Minister's Question Times are taken in the Chamber

Urgent Questions aren't included in the Question and Answers search. There is a SPICe fact sheet listing Urgent and emergency questions.

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Question reference: S6W-18787

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 07 June 2023
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 the Security of Network and Information Systems (NIS) Regulations audit lifecycle is continuing to assess on a yearly basis all NHS Scotland health boards, cyber resilience practices and improvements, and what the findings from the yearly audits/reviews have done to help inform the strategic direction towards the areas of greatest risk.

The Security of Network and Information Systems Regulations audit lifecycle continues to assess health boards on a yearly basis against the Public Sector Cyber Resilience framework

Working with the NHS Scotland Cyber Centre of Excellence, the Scottish Health Competent Authority are continuing to support boards in addressing any findings and gaps in their application of the NIS Regulations to mitigate the cyber threat.

This includes improvements around centralised security, monitoring, threat hunting, incident response and training & awareness. We are therefore better enabled in the achievement of security compliance across NHS Scotland, protecting people’s data and improving the resilience of critical services for patient care.

Question reference: S6W-18807

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 07 June 2023
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 created a Knowledge, Information and Data (KIND) virtual learning academy.

Question reference: S6W-18808

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 07 June 2023
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 carried out the identification of requirements (roles, responsibilities, knowledge and skills) for an IG competency framework across health and care.

The National Information Governance (IG) Competency Framework for health and care is currently under review as part of the Data Strategy for Health & Social Care. NHS Education for Scotland has been commissioned to review and update this framework. This will identify roles, responsibilities, knowledge and skills, as well as learning resources and career pathways in various Information Governance areas, including privacy, information security and data science. The IG Competency Framework is being co-produced through close engagement with the many stakeholders across health and care, academia, supervisory authorities and professional bodies.

Question reference: S6W-18925

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 09 June 2023
Current Status: Answered by Michael Matheson on 20 June 2023

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-18307 by Michael Matheson on 2 June 2023, what business continuity plans are being prepared for buildings with reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete.

Question reference: S6W-19136

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 14 June 2023
Current Status: Answered by Michael Matheson on 20 June 2023

To ask the Scottish Government how many calls to the Scottish Ambulance Service have been responded to (a) within (i) under 10, (ii) 10 to 29, (iii) 30 to 59 and (iv) 60 to 120 and (b) after over 120 minutes in each calendar year since 2016, also broken down by NHS board area.

Question reference: S6W-18782

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 07 June 2023
Current Status: Answered by Elena Whitham 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 established the digital contribution to the reduction of drug-related harm in Scotland.

Question reference: S6W-18788

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 07 June 2023
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 delivered a Cyber Centre of Excellence (CCoE).

Question reference: S6W-18812

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 07 June 2023
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd 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 offer continued support for innovation through development of Healthy Ageing and Mental Health innovation clusters to support increased investment in Scotland and improved infrastructure for innovation and evaluation activity within mental health.

Please see answer to question SW-18813 on 20 June 2023 for how we support innovation through demand led challenges.

We established the Digital Mental Health Programme in 2020 to respond to the increased demand for mental health services by integrating and maximising use of digital, increasing existing service capacity and resilience within each health board.

We continue to work with Digital Health and Care Innovation Centre (DHI) to host the digital mental health innovation cluster and identify opportunities for reinforcing a robust mental health infrastructure. Since its launch in March 2022 the cluster has recruited 950 members from across clinical, academic and industrial stakeholders and promotes innovation through the development of collaboration facilitated through a number of clusters events the latest focused on three key areas: prevention, greater access to services and support for mental health services staff.

All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at /chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

Question reference: S6W-18786

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 07 June 2023
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 conducted the second national Digital Maturity exercise with health and care organisations, and what the snapshot is of priority areas.

Question reference: S6W-18810

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 07 June 2023
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 its UK and international collaborations, bringing inward investment in support of improvements, and innovations and industry collaborations.

The Scottish Government, NHS Scotland and our partners have an ongoing commitment to developing UK and international collaborations. This includes active participation in European and International networks as well as hosting of inward study visits to Scotland and outward visits to international partners. Inward visits include from the Netherlands, Denmark, Andalucia, Wales, World Health Organisation (Georgia and Macedonia) and Spain.

The Digital Health and Care Innovation Centre (DHI) play a key role in supporting inward investment opportunities. This has included:

The AICE Horizon Europe Project for AI-supported Image Analysis in Large Bowel Camera Capsule Endoscopy (AICE) which has seen 1m euros made available to Scottish partners as part of a 6m euro programme
The Northwest Europe CHANCE project, funded by Interreg Europe, focussed on development of promising eHealth applications and nanotechnology for heart failure patients at home.
The £5m Moray Growth Deal supported by UK Government funding