Chamber and committees

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-18798 on 20 June 2023. 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

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.

The Scottish Government actively promotes cyber security to reduce the risk of cyber-attacks and protect against the unauthorised exploitation of systems, networks, and technologies. This has included the creation of NHS Scotland’s Cyber Centre of Excellence (CCoE), which opened in December 2022 in Abertay Universities cyberQuarter.

Working with the CCoE, we continue to prioritise the use security capabilities of existing technologies and deployment of new security tools. This approach allows real time discovery of vulnerabilities and potential issues across a national view.

The Cyber Centre of Excellence is complimented by the Scottish Cyber Coordination Centre (SC3) which will be a key partner, enhancing our national incident response capacity and capabilities.

This is in addition to the annual NIS audit of NHS boards to ensure their current practices are up to date and that their responses reflect current best practice.

The initial discovery work identified that in addition to a new national approach to Radiology Information Systems being required, there was a range of additional improvements that could be made to diagnostic services across Scotland if a more strategically consistent approach to the provision of digital technology was taken. As such, work on a standalone approach to RIS has been paused and a new Digital Diagnostics Steering Group established to explore options for future investment in national digital infrastructure to support diagnostic services within the current fiscal framework.

The Scottish Wide Area Network has been widely used across all of the NHS and much of the rest of the public sector in Scotland since 2014. With the contract coming to an end, procurement was commenced and the contract for the ongoing delivery of SWAN was awarded to BT on 12th April 2023 for 6 years. Work is now underway to transition organisations from the incumbent supplier to the new BT-supported network from August 2023 (with planned roll out of new service still scheduled for 2026).

The Inventory Management System (IMS) was successfully rolled out to all Health Boards at the end of March 2023. Further work is underway with the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service and Scottish Ambulance Service to identify potential areas of benefit for local IMS stores. In addition to this, Data and Analytics workshops have been held with 8 Boards to demonstrate further improvements at a local level as a result of the IMS implementation.

The recently released Data Strategy for Health and Social Care details a set of ethical principles for the use of data across our health and care sector. These principles are applicable to the use of AI as well as the broader use of data.

Furthermore, the Data Strategy sets out our intent to work towards the safe adoption of AI tools, working to international best practice. We have also committed to developing a policy framework for adoption of AI across health and by Spring 2024.

Yes. The Scottish Government worked collaboratively with Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and other key partners to develop new guidance for telecare on the fire legislation. This can be found here - A Partnership Approach to Fire Safety: Good Practice Guide | TEC Scotland

A range of digital mental health therapies are available to support people to self-refer. These include treatments for: Insomnia, Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD), Stress, Resilience, Space from COVID, Supporting An Anxious Child, Supporting An Anxious Teen.

These treatments are open to anyone through self-referral across all areas of Scotland. In addition to this we have about 12 treatments open to self-referral for Health and Care staff, this including depression, a range of anxiety disorders. Table 1 provides more detail on what is currently available.

Table 1: Digital Therapies - Available treatments

There are a range of different digital tools that already support, or have the potential to support, safer staffing and more flexible working arrangements – by its very nature the use of digital enables new ways of working. This includes, for example, the provision by Health Boards of laptops and remote login access to a number of staff, the roll-out across NHS Scotland of Microsoft Teams and the wider M365 platform that supports flexible communication and collaboration across organisational boundaries, development of decision support tools to support clinical decision making and use of patient-facing tools such as Near Me that do not require staff to remain in a fixed location. Working with the likes of NHS National Services Scotland, we continue to support the development and implementation of further tools in support of the health and social care workforce. This includes the roll out of new GP IT systems, which will better support multi-disciplinary team working in community settings, tools to support better scheduling of appointments and utilisation of theatre and workforce capacity, and rostering tools to better support strategic workforce planning.