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 MSPs 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-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-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 https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

Question reference: S6W-18785

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 established a national decision support service, building on the Right Decision Service.

Question reference: S6W-18797

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 put in place a "federated" collaboration of Microsoft 365 across health and social care (local government) systems.

The M365 Cross-Organisation Collaboration Programme has been established to maximise collaboration and communication opportunities available to organisations across Health and Social Care. The ability of organisations to safely and easily share information through the M365 platform will provide multiple benefits to citizens and ease pressures on our service delivery systems.

Working in partnership with the Local Government Digital Office, work is underway with staff in participating Local Authorities & Health Boards and further planning is in progress to enable wider data sharing.

Question reference: S6W-18814

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, what it has done to commence a programme of work to improve how clinical information in its systems is recorded against common, internationally defined standards.

COSLA and The Scottish Government published our Data Strategy for Health and Social Care which has committed to setting out the preferred information standards for use across Scotland’s health and social care sector. Scottish Government will seek to align with international and UK defined standards to facilitate interoperability and bring consistency to the ways in which clinical information is recorded. Work is progressing to implement SNOMED CT in health settings (with a new Ontology server now operational), alongside the recent implementation of ICD 11 codes in mental health. Furthermore, work is now underway to stand up a Data Standards board for Scotland’s health and care data in summer 2023.

Question reference: S6W-18816

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, what it has done to develop its approach to the introduction of legally mandated standards for the safe and effective sharing of information across health and social care, under the powers proposed by the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill.

Work on the National Care Service Bill continues as it progresses through the parliamentary process. The Bill allows Ministers to set out, in secondary legislation, the details of a scheme to support information sharing so services can be provided effectively and efficiently by, and on behalf of, NCS and NHS. Second, the Bill will also allow Ministers to set out information standards so there is a consistent approach to how information is defined, stored and reported.

However, prior to conclusion of the bill, and in support of the introduction of data standards, COSLA and the Scottish Government are currently in the process of convening a Data Standards Board for health and social care. This will allow us to create clear governance regarding the preferred data standards for use across the sector.

Question reference: S6W-18777

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, whether it has expanded Mind to Mind with additional functions and resources.

Question reference: S6W-18817

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, what it has done to develop an approach to improving the quality and consistency of protected characteristic demographic data.

The recently released Data Strategy for Health and Social Care 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.

Question reference: S6W-18798

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 established a new national information governance programme to address the recommendations of the Information Governance Review executive summary.

Question reference: S6W-18790

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, what it has done to expand the National Clinical Data Store.

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.