Chamber and committees

We are further modernising and expanding our Connect Me service to all primary care settings for management of hypertension. Over 70,000 people have now been supported through Connect Me to manage their blood pressure from home in Scotland with improved outcomes. It is estimated to have prevented more than 170,000 unnecessary appointments. We expect Connect Me for hypertension management to be operational in every Health Board in Scotland by the Autumn.

The Security of Network and Information Systems Regulations audit lifecycle continues to assess health boards on a yearly basis against the Public Sector Cyber Resilience framework

Working with the NHS Scotland Cyber Centre of Excellence, the Scottish Health Competent Authority are continuing to support boards in addressing any findings and gaps in their application of the NIS Regulations to mitigate the cyber threat.

This includes improvements around centralised security, monitoring, threat hunting, incident response and training & awareness. We are therefore better enabled in the achievement of security compliance across NHS Scotland, protecting people’s data and improving the resilience of critical services for patient care.

Digital skills resources for healthcare staff can be accessed on the dedicated Digital health & Care Section of the Turas Learning Platform: https://learn.nes.nhs.scot/2198 .

Scottish Government has established the £2,75m Digital Lifelines programme which aims to reduce drug-related harm and death. Significant cross-sector programme of work is well underway and will focus on inclusion, services and innovation. The next phase of the programme has begun and will be led by the Digital Health and Care Innovation Centre (DHI). More information is available here –

https://tec.scot/programme-areas/digital-lifelines-scotland

Through continued investment in the national ‘GP IT’ re-provisioning programme, Health Boards will have the ability to offer new and advanced, modernised systems for General Practice in Scotland. This dedicated resource supports the integration of primary, community and social care and facilitates increased standardisation of GP IT and integration into the wider eHealth infrastructure.

Cegedim (who offer the Vision product) passed Accreditation to allow rollout of the new Vision system in March 2022. Since July 2022, the migration process has been underway, with over 100 practices now on the new Managed Services across four health boards (NHS Tayside, Lanarkshire, Lothian and Grampian).

The new system provides a number of improvements for GPs and practices in relation to appointments, prescribing, connectivity to systems, shared community care and more robust centralised hosting.

This information is not held centrally by the Scottish Government.

Yes. The Transforming Local Systems programme concluded in May 2023. Work continues to ensure the key benefits of the programme can now be realised across health and care with Healthcare Improvement Scotland now taking ownership of the service design resources. While it is still being developed, the online resource is available now for organisations to learn from the programme’s experience - Designing person-centred services for housing, social care and health - Designing person-centred services for housing, social care and health v.6 (ihub.scot)

The final evaluation report for Transforming Local Systems is going through final governance sign off though we expect to publish at www.tec.scot before the end of June.

The Scottish Government does not have any plans to determine the number of social care settings that may be affected. Local authorities have responsibility for provision of social care services and therefore the contracts with relevant providers. Building safety is a matter for the owner of the building.

Following a desktop review of all NHS Scotland properties suspected to contain reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete, NHS Scotland Assure is preparing a paper on options to proceed with discovery surveys. The timeframe for completion of the survey programme is dependent on the start date of the surveys and the survey option chosen.

Following a desktop review of all NHS Scotland properties suspected to contain reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete, NHS Scotland Assure is preparing a paper to inform the Scottish Government on options to proceed with discovery surveys. The cost of conducting the discovery surveys is dependent on the survey option chosen.