FST JOURNAL

Data and technology are really driving not just health and social care, but our everyday lives. Take the transformation that occurred during the Covid pandemic. There was an almost overnight shift to using digital tools and sharing of new data. As someone who led the development of the Covid vaccination system in Scotland, it was incredibly exciting to see how data and technology were changing and transforming the care of patients.

However, technology itself does not have to be high tech and we are always thinking about the best use of the tools that have been around for many years such as text messages.

The NHS Near Me service saw a remarkable increase in uptake during the pandemic. This is a video consulting service which is very easy to use for a wide range of people. It was particularly useful in areas like the Highlands and our island communities where travel is time-consuming and difficult. We have recently shared that over 60 million patient miles have been saved through the use of NHS Near Me which has great benefits for patients and our workforce.

This also demonstrates the power that digital and data have for the climate challenge, which is probably the next really big issue facing us. From a Scottish government perspective, there is a real opportunity to make a big difference by reducing the need for travel.

Data strategy

Underpinning our work is our data strategy. We launched this early in 2023 and it focusses on the need to empower people, allowing citizens to be in greater control of their own health and leading to better health outcomes. We want to make services and information more available in a safe and secure way and make a real difference to people’s lives.

We also want to empower our workforce who are the lifeblood of our health and care services. From a data perspective, putting data and information and the right tools in the hands of clinicians, nurses and other staff will change and transform health and care for us all. We should not forget the contribution of industry and academia in making innovations and improved services available.

Underpinning the whole strategy, something we have placed at the centre of everything, is ethics: we have to make sure we do the right thing for the right people. In addition, we have to bring the public with us and build trust. During the pandemic, we put in place an ethics framework to share with the public the reasons behind our actions, explaining why we were sharing data and how. We want to build on that and open up more sources of data.

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One of our big ambitions for digital health and care in Scotland is our Digital Front Door programme. We will develop our health and care together, focussing on digital channels that help us do this. The ambition is to bring together health and care data in a way that will actually support the integration of those services. Individuals do not tend to differentiate between health data or care data.

The ambition of the Digital Front Door is to allow individuals to share the information they want with the doctor, the nurse, the physiotherapist or the care worker, without having to repeat the same story on every occasion: ‘Tell us your story once and we will share it as needed’.

This should be launched before the end of the current parliamentary year. It also seeks to address the challenge of digital inclusion. We estimate that around 10% of the Scottish population either cannot engage with digital or else choose not to. We must make sure we do not leave anyone behind and there has been some great work done with our Digital Lifelines programme, in particular to encourage the homeless and those likely to need addiction services to gain access to support services. This allows earlier intervention and hopefully helps to mitigate the challenging situations they find themselves in.

Delivery plan

The Scottish Government has committed to an annual delivery plan for all of our digital health and care programmes. There are over 60 programmes within that plan, which sets out clearly what we expect to achieve, what we are working on, what the timelines are and when we expect to see the resulting benefits. Both that delivery plan and the data strategy are key documents for our engagement with industry and other partners.

These commitments cover a very wide range of items, from a new patient identity system right through to measures helping digitally-excluded people to access services.

However, we cannot deliver any of this without our dedicated workforce. I have to acknowledge that recruitment is not easy, especially in areas like cyber skills. We are therefore bringing different teams together to collaborate with each other, with partners, and with industry and academia.

Technology is being used to support collaboration across health and care. We are working with all 32 local authorities, the health boards and across Scottish Government to use quite simple tools like Microsoft 365 as a way of bringing people and teams together.

A new Masters programme called Digital Transformation in Health and Care in Scotland has been launched. It provides an opportunity to bring through the next generation of people who want to work in our sector.  At Board level we have initiatives to deepen the understanding of digital, supporting leaders in clinical areas and in the care sector, helping them understand the opportunities that digital, data and AI can bring to improve the way that we work in health and care.  

Industry and academia have an important role in supporting digital health and care. The Scottish government sponsors DHI, the digital health and care innovation centre. It also works closely with The Data Lab to understand new technology and potential applications.

During 2024, we expect to be launching the next round of CivTech challenges. CivTech is a Scottish government-led programme that encourages startups to develop new ideas in areas of the public sector where there currently are no solutions to specific challenges. One that we will be looking at in particular is around the issue of wellbeing, bringing innovation into health and care in a way that can change the lives of our citizens so that they live better, healthier lives.