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-14144

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 2 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the commitment in its Digital Health and Care Strategy, what it has done to develop career development opportunities within the specialist digital, data, design and technology (DDAT) professional workforce within health and social care.

We are in the process of exploring the feasibility of how we can embed the DDaT Framework into all NHS Scotland Health Boards. This is being discussed collaboratively across health and social care in Scotland and with NHS England to share experiences of ongoing developments and avoid potential duplication of effort.

The DDaT Framework will help provide consistency across health and social care organisations in ongoing development and access to learning resources. It will also enable us to explore a common definition of job roles and align to workforce competition across all sectors in recruitment and retention.

Question reference: S6W-14096

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 2 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the commitment in its Digital Health and Care Strategy, how much it has spent on introducing new fully digital clinical and care services, treatment and support since October 2021, broken down by service.

In addition to spend set out in the answer to question S6W-14087 on 27 January 2023 in 2022-23 as part of the overall health portfolio investment, Scottish Government are investing £99.6 million in digital health and care. 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-14092

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 2 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the commitment in its Digital Health and Care Strategy, what it has done to enable people to (a) book/rearrange appointments, (b) order prescriptions, (c) update their details and (d) generally conduct all routine "transactions" online, and how many people have made use of these services in the last two years, broken down by NHS board.

Question reference: S6W-14116

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 2 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the commitment in its Digital Health and Care Strategy, what work it has done with the digital identity programme to adopt a common approach to online identity where personal data is controlled by the individual.

The Digital Identity Programme is also a Scottish Government Programme. The first phase of adopting a common approach to online identity for health & care services is through the Digital Front Door programme. The two programmes are working collaboratively as the Digital Front Door application is developed. The application will be built on a common approach to identity and be aligned with the DIS programme.

Question reference: S6W-14128

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 2 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what its approach is to (a) national infrastructure and (b) data (i) hosting and (ii) architecture across the health and care system.

Question reference: S6W-14143

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 2 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the commitment in its Digital Health and Care Strategy, what it has done to expand the specialist digital, data, design and technology (DDAT) professional workforce within health and social care.

Question reference: S6W-14157

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 20 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 2 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what it considers the impact of digital technology is on the health and care workforce.

The impact of digital technology on the health and care workforce has been considered in several reports, such as the Topol Review commissioned by NHS England .

In general terms, digital technology can support the workforce in the delivery of care, free up capacity reducing the administrative burden and open up opportunities for new models of care and new ways of working. The workforce already works in the digital age, and digital technology will continue to augment and enhance the person-centred nature of health and social care services.

Question reference: S6W-14117

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 2 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the commitment in its Digital Health and Care Strategy, which health and social care organisations it has provided support to in order to have access to the basic resources required to develop as digital organisations.

Question reference: S6W-14141

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 2 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the commitment in its Digital Health and Care Strategy, what it has done to streamline the information governance landscape setting out the roles of key organisations within health and care.

The Scottish Government has undertaken extensive engagement with stakeholders across health and care, including health boards, the research community, industry and many other stakeholders, in order to understand the information governance landscape and identify opportunities for improvement.

The was published on 1 April 2022. As a result of the recommendations from the review, The National Information Governance Programme had been established to streamline the Information Governance landscape with focus on the following key areas:

Co-designing options for a more balanced, federated IG model
Improving the Information Governance maturity across the Health and Social Care Ecosystem
Empowering People in digital and data
Delivering the right Information Governance tools
Co-designing transformative participatory public engagement models and
Enhancing transparency

Furthermore, the Scottish Government recently funded and launched ( RDS). RDSis working to create a new Researcher Access Service that will provide streamlined lawful, fair and safe access to health and care data for the public good.

Question reference: S6W-14146

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 2 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the commitment in its Digital Health and Care Strategy, how much it has invested in information governance and cyber skills within health and social care.

The Scottish Government is supporting staff to develop digital skills through the

Specifically, to support IG and cyber security across health and social care, the Scottish Government has provided funding to NHS boards for programmes of work specifically relating to Information Governance and Security. For example:

The National IG Programme
The Digital Workforce Programme
NIS Competent Authority for Health.

This is in addition to bespoke spends on this topic area, such as the Public Sector Cyber Upskilling fund, which was targeted at Emergency Services, Local Authorities, Health Sector, SEPA and Scottish Water.

As these programmes often rely on appropriate use of allocated funding to NHS boards, we do not hold information centrally on the amount specifically on the development of information governance and cyber skills.

For more information on the Building Digital Skills and Leadership Programme, I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-14150 on 2 February 2023. 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 .