- Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
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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 is doing to develop digital services in support of those in receipt of care at home.
Answer
Scottish Government is doing a range of things to support care at home. Delivery is ongoing, as set out in the annual delivery plan for Digital Health & Care (see ). An update will be published later this year with delivery priorities for 2023/24, and will include an overview of progress against existing commitments.
In addition, key work is being taken forward through the digital telecare programme, being led by Local Government Digital Office (LGDO), to safely transition over 180,000 users of telecare in Scotland from analogue to digital telephony connections. This offers significant opportunities to look to further develop this service with more advanced technologies and better use of data. This has, to date, included the development of key resources for local areas through a developed digital telecare playbook.
As well as delivery aims set out in the healthcare framework for care homes - My Health, My Care, My Home - healthcare framework for adults living in care homes - gov.scot ( ), further work is being taken forward through the national Technology Enabled Care (TEC) programme’s digital in social care activity -
- Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
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Current Status:
Answered by Humza Yousaf on 2 February 2023
To ask the Scottish Government, in relation to its last conducted digital maturity exercises in the health and care sector, which areas were identified as areas for improvement, and what funding was allocated to support these.
Answer
Despite the digital maturity assessment taking place in 2019, the findings were not made available until early 2020. Unfortunately, much of the work planned to take forward the learning from the assessment was disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. As referenced in question S6W-14135 on 2 February 2023, we will take forward the new digital maturity programme in 2023 to re-establish those areas of key priority.
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 .
- Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
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Current Status:
Answered by Humza Yousaf on 2 February 2023
To ask the Scottish Government how often it (a) reviews and (b) publishes its
approach to ensuring any new technologies used in health and care comply with
its technical, data and design standards, and when it last did so.
Answer
There are existing organisations that evaluate new technologies including Scottish Health Technologies Group. Scottish Government operates a robust governance structure to review and support compliance of new and existing technologies. All programmes are required to comply with UK standards including those set by MHRA and ICO.The 2022-23 Delivery plan sets out further ambitions for our approach to digital futures.
- Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
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Current Status:
Answered by Humza Yousaf on 2 February 2023
To ask the Scottish Government whether it has developed a safety case for all major health and care systems, and, if so, what approach it followed to design these.
Answer
Currently, several key national programmes have undertaken safety cases - this includes the national vaccination programme and work on Connect me (remote health monitoring). More broadly, we are currently developing our national policy approach to safety cases within digital health and care. This will be developed in line with national work being taken forward through the Scottish Patient Safety Programme.
- Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 25 January 2023
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Current Status:
Answered by Humza Yousaf on 2 February 2023
To ask the Scottish Government whether it has a permanent digital testing environment that allows potential new health and care technology to be developed and tested in a safe environment, and, if this is the case, how much was spent on developing it.
Answer
DHI offer a demonstration environment where new innovations and ideas for health and care can be tested. All health boards have their own test environments and processes. NES and NSS both have national test infrastructure. As part of all major programmes, testing is a critical component which is included in the overall funding for systems and technology.
- Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 24 January 2023
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Current Status:
Answered by Maree Todd on 2 February 2023
To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-13688 by Maree Todd on 23 January 2023, whether it will provide a list of the 35 projects, broken down by (a) the work that each project completed as a result of the funding, (b) how much funding each project was awarded and (c) the area in which each project is based.
Answer
Details of the projects funded through the Neurological Framework can be found on the following page: . As projects reach completion, they are asked to submit a final report which details the outcomes achieved. These reports will be made available on this page in due course.
The Scottish Government, alongside the Neurological Alliance of Scotland, are hosting a series of practice-sharing sessions to help to showcase and promote innovative work undertaken by the funded projects. The first of these sessions were held in December 2022 and recordings of these initial three sessions can be viewed here: . Further sessions are currently being planned, to be held on 01 and 08 March 2023.
- Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
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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 supporting health and social care organisations to have access to the basic resources required to develop as digital organisations, broken down by organisation.
Answer
Supporting health and social care organisations to develop as digital organisations takes the form of many different resources and initiatives. This includes, for example, development of guides such as the Digital Telecare Playbook that supports organisations manage the transition to digital telecare. It also includes the skills of staff, and investment in basic infrastructure such as web cameras to enable use of Near Me. These costs are built into budgets for national programmes, and into local organisations budgets for the delivery of digital developments. It is therefore not possible to breakdown funding. This year, in 2022-23 as part of the overall health portfolio investment, we are investing £99.6 million in digital health and care. This covers a huge amount of work ‘behind the scenes’ that is needed to modernise our health and care systems.
This investment in our systems – and the required cyber security, the training of staff to use the systems and the ongoing maintenance and development – takes up most of our budget. The 2022-23 Delivery plan provides further detail on spend across the Digital Health and Care directorate in its support of health and care organisations.
- Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
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Current Status:
Answered by Humza Yousaf on 2 February 2023
To ask the Scottish Government what software packages, other than Office 365, were considered for embedding across the health and care system.
Answer
Advances in technology and the growth in its use, means we need a constant focus on what is coming next. Our annual delivery plan for digital health and care (Care in a Digital Age: Delivery Plan 2022 to 2023 - ) sets out our ambitions for technology and infrastructure delivery.
Many items in our delivery plan cover embedding software packages across health and care. Examples include embedding clinical software to support effective and safe patient care including GP IT, Picture and Archiving Communications System, Emergency Care Summary.
The use of software packages is driven by clinical need and staff need. The Scottish Government are in ongoing engagement with stakeholders to seek views as required.
Software is not the only component to be embedded in the health and care system. Successful delivery of digital health and care requires many factors including services design, skills, workflows, and adoption. More information on this is available in the delivery plan.
The Delivery Plan will be reviewed and revised on an ongoing basis and the 2023-24 Delivery Plan that is due to publish later this year will include a further update.
- Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
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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, whether it has provided a single and secure way for health and care staff to sign in to clinical and care systems and data.
Answer
The Scottish Government continues to support NHS Boards to implement single sign on solutions and technologies to have safe and streamlined access to systems. In addition, the Scottish Government is supporting the federation of the Microsoft 365 platforms to further integrate access to systems and data across the health and care sector.
For further information on M365 federation, I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-14111 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 .
- Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
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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 training programmes it has developed to ensure that all health and care staff have the essential digital skills that they need to do their job, broken down by NHS board.
Answer
The Building Digital Skills and Leadership Programme enables the delivery of Priority 4 of the refreshed Digital Health and Care strategy where ‘Digital skills are seen as core skills for the workforce across the health and care sector’. The associated programme priorities are found within the Care in the Digital Age: delivery plan 2022 to 2023.
