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-14116

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
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 work it has done with the digital identity programme to adopt a common approach to online identity where personal data is controlled by the individual.

The Digital Identity Programme is also a Scottish Government Programme. The first phase of adopting a common approach to online identity for health & care services is through the Digital Front Door programme. The two programmes are working collaboratively as the Digital Front Door application is developed. The application will be built on a common approach to identity and be aligned with the DIS programme.

Question reference: S6W-14143

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
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 has done to expand the specialist digital, data, design and technology (DDAT) professional workforce within health and social care.

Question reference: S6W-14163

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 20 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 2 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government how much it has invested in (a) the Digital Health & Care Innovation Centre (DHI) (b) Innovation Centres other than DHI, (c) The Scotland 5G Centre, (d) the cyber resilience sector, (e) the Centre for Sustainable Delivery and (f) Public Health Scotland to ensure that Scotland gets maximum benefit from digital health and care.

Our commitment in the Digital Health and Care Strategy is to work with these organisations, and others, to realise the potential of digital health and care, not necessarily to provide additional investment.

However, please see the below response in respect of funding that is provided, covering the period of April 2021 to December 2022:

Scottish Government invested £1,306,888 in support of the Digital Health & Care Innovation Centre (DHI). To confirm, the aquaculture and construction innovation centres are not relevant to digital health and care investment. For Precision Medicine Scotland, there was no spend in 2021-22 and 2022-23 figures are not available due to the financial year not yet being complete. Scottish Innovation Centres is funded by the Scottish Funding Council (SFC), detail on SFC spending is available publicly on their website Funding announcements (sfc.ac.uk) . Given the various funding streams from across Scottish Government to Innovation Organisations it would not be possible to quantify those funds in support of digital health and care related work only.

Scottish Government funding to Public Health Scotland is set out in each year’s Scottish Budget which is publicly available on the Scottish Government’s website: Scottish Budget - gov.scot ( www.gov.scot ) Detail on PHS spending is set out within the organisation’s annual accounts which are publicly available on their website. Additionally, we directly provided £1,597,088 in support of various programmes of work relating to Digital Health and Care.

The Scottish Government has allocated £1,132,500 for its strategic work programme to build cyber resilience across sectors, as well as an initial spend during 2022/23 on setting up the Scottish Cyber Coordination Centre.

Since 2021-22, we have provided £2.45 million funding to the Scotland 5G Centre which has contributed to the development and implementation of digital health and care 5G use cases.

The Centre for Sustainable Delivery (CfSD) – In 2021-22 Golden Jubilee/CfSD received allocations from planned care of £5.4m - £3m in programme funding and £2.4m in staffing costs at CfSD. The 2022-23 figures are not available due to the financial year not yet being complete.

Question reference: S6W-14161

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 20 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 2 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government how many staff have used the Turas platform in each year since it was launched.

Question reference: S6W-14166

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 20 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 2 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what it has done to collaborate with and support small and medium-sized digital health and care enterprises to offer a clear product route from development to implementation at scale.

Question reference: S6W-14125

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
Current Status: Answered by Humza Yousaf on 2 February 2023

To ask the Scottish Government how it is (a) promoting and (b) facilitating appropriate, safe and secure access to (i) clinical, (ii) biomedical, (iii) care and (iv) other data for approved research, development, and innovation in the public interest.

The Scottish Government and COSLA are developing a Data Strategy for Health and Social Care due for publication this year. In advance of this Strategy, the Scottish Government recently funded and launched Research Data Scotland ( RDS) to help fulfil this commitment. The launch of RDS is a key step in achieving our goal to support research and innovation as is set out in the forthcoming Data Strategy for Health and Social Care.

The Data Strategy will examine and bring clarity on eight priority areas: Data Access, Ethical Approaches to Data, Protecting and Sharing Data, Supporting Research and Innovation, Creating Insights from Data, Information Standards and Interoperability, Talent and Culture and Technology and Infrastructure.

The Strategy will set out commitments and deliverables for each priority area, this will include:

facilitating safe and secure access to health and social care data for research, industry and innovation purposes,
enabling staff to have greater access to and make better use of health and social care data. They will also outline how we can generate better insight from data to improve delivery of services and inform strategic planning,
developing and supporting staff to have the essential data skills to understand and make better use of data and data driven tools.
articulating the deliverables which are inextricably linked to infrastructure, architecture and hosting, in addition to the actions set out in the 2022-23 DHAC Delivery Plan.

Through the course of developing the Data Strategy the Scottish Government has undertaken a wide range of engagement with professionals and the public. This includes a formal consultation alongside bespoke public engagement seeking their views on access to data amongst other topics. The analysis of consultation responses can be view on gov.scot. Our Data Dialogues work can be view on our website.

Question reference: S6W-14107

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
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 all health and care staff have the devices and equipment they need to do their job, including the ability to work remotely/flexibly, and, if not, how many staff do not currently have such devices and equipment, broken down by NHS board.

This is a matter for individual NHS Boards and Local Authorities. It is their responsibility to ensure that staff receive the necessary equipment they require.

In support of this, in 2019 Scotland undertook its first digital maturity assessment across health and social care which helped to identify current system capabilities, capacity and skills. Key areas identified for improvement was to improve capability and infrastructure. National programmes such as Near Me and the roll out of Microsoft 365 have further supported this improvement, whilst other national programmes are now underway such as the National Digital Platform and Digital Front Door will build on this further.

A further assessment is due to take place later this year and it will provide an updated baseline of digital maturity and support the further gathering of information to allow us to better understand what good looks like, the resource required to support organisational development and support further review and prioritisation as required, tied into local service planning.

Question reference: S6W-14094

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
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 is the case that it has provided the ability for people to use digital products and services to manage their condition(s), and, if it is not the case, when it plans to do so.

Our remote health pathways programme continues to support the public with access to monitor a condition from home through a supported service which can improve treatment compared to a self-management service. The blood pressure monitoring service in particular allows people to feed in their blood pressure and receive feedback on how to manage their wellbeing from home. This is in addition to existing services that support self-management, such as My Diabetes My Way. Other services are expected to be increased across a range of other conditions as set out in the Digital Health and Care delivery plan. (see Care in the Digital Age: delivery plan 2022 to 2023 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) ).

Question reference: S6W-14142

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
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 work it has done with senior leaders within health and social care to develop the skills needed to embed digital technology and literacy across their organisations.

We have recently agreed the arrangement for a new post-graduate course in Scotland. The 'Leading Digital Transformation in Health and Care' (MSc) will provide up to 60 funded places aimed at senior and aspiring leaders across the health and social care sector. Year one commences in April 2023.

Work is also underway designing the 'Executive Leadership in a Digital Age' Masterclass programme. This will equip Board-level executives and non-executives with the necessary understanding of digital health, governance and leadership skills to support transforming service delivery.

Question reference: S6W-14090

Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
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 residents in care homes.

Scottish Government is doing a range of things to support residents in care homes. Delivery is ongoing, as set out in My Health, My Care, My Home - healthcare framework for adults living in care homes - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) . Key aspirations for enhancing Scotland's care homes' digital capacity to be able to fully embrace the potential for supporting people living in care homes and enabling new care management processes through the use of digital technology is specifically set out in The Connecting People Connecting Services Action Plan.