Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government’s strategic approach is to deliver digital appointment functionality through MyCare.scot as part of the wider Digital Front Door programme. Building on existing common national digital capabilities and infrastructure, this will support a more consistent, scalable and interoperable appointments experience across health and social care services in Scotland.

I refer the member to the answer to question S7W-00640 on 8 June 2026. 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

Within the Scottish Government policy responsibility for Health and Care Research sits with the Chief Scientist Office (CSO)

NHS Research Scotland (NRS) is a partnership between the NHS Boards and CSO. NRS works to ensure that the NHS in Scotland provides the best environment to support clinical trials. The Scottish Government provides annual NRS Infrastructure support funding. The 2025/26 figure for this funding was £46.16 million.

The VPAG Commercial Clinical Trials Investment Programme was agreed as part of the 2024 Voluntary Scheme for Branded Medicines Pricing, Access and Growth (VPAG). It aims to strengthen the UK’s global competitiveness in life sciences and support innovation led growth. The programme is supported by approximately £400 million of funding from the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry members

The clinical trials component of VPAG is intended to enhance capacity and delivery of commercial clinical research across the UK. Approximately £40 million from this element of the VPAG investment programme is expected to be invested in Scotland over the five year scheme. CSO has worked with NRS to configure this investment to maximise the opportunities for patients to participate in commercial clinical trials. This includes the setting up of 4 Commercial Research Delivery Centres (CRDC's) - based in Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow - to accelerate and strengthen commercial clinical research delivery.

The Scottish Government funds the Scottish Health Research Register (SHARE). This allows people, aged 11 and over, to register their interest in being contacted about relevant Clinical Trials based on the coded data in their various NHS computer records. As of 10th June 2026, SHARE had recruited 312,835 participants SHARE | RegisterforSHARE

The Tobacco and Vapes Act 2026 provides us with powers to expand existing smoke free spaces, as well as create vape free spaces and heated tobacco free spaces.

These powers support the implementation of our Tobacco and Vaping Framework Place based actions, and we are considering how we will use the powers, ensuring action is both evidence based and proportionate.

Any action will be subject to consultation and I will update Parliament with the next steps in due course.

Scotland’s screening policy, as is the case in the other nations of the UK, is guided by the recommendations of the UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC). Before making any recommendations, the UK NSC considers the best available evidence to establish whether the harms of screening outweigh the benefits.

On 28 May, the UK NSC recommended that prostate screening should be offered to men aged 45 to 61 with both a confirmed BRCA2 gene variant and a family history of breast, ovarian, pancreatic or prostate cancer.

The Minister for Mental Wellbeing, Public Health, Sport, Alcohol and Drugs, Maree Todd, welcomes and accepts this recommendation. As an immediate priority we are working to consider how the current system for cancer surveillance across our Health Boards can be strengthened to bring us in line with the UK NSC Recommendation. In parallel, work will explore what might be needed to formalise the existing system as a national screening programme.

The UK NSC will continue to gather evidence on the impact of screening on other groups, particularly through the TRANSFORM trial. The Scottish Government will support this evidence gathering in any way it can.

I refer the member to the answer to question S7W-00816 on 16 June 2026. The Scottish Government has commissioned an independent scalability assessment by Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS) to explore effective expansion of our Rapid Cancer Diagnostic Service (RCDS) Pilots.

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 Scottish Government is in the process of commissioning NHS Health Boards to develop and submit monthly trajectories to support improvement against the 62-day cancer treatment standard.

Boards are expected to consider existing backlogs and implement identified improvement actions to ensure the development and maintenance of a sustainable service.

The Centre for Sustainable Delivery will continue to monitor individual Board performance and support improvement activities including fully implementing the Framework for Effective Cancer Management.

It is important that there is an open and transparent national evaluation of this pilot programme and I am committed to regularly publishing operational data from open sites.

The Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) has received a full submission from the marketing authorisation holder, AbbVie Ltd., for mirvetuximab soravtansine (elahere®) for the treatment of adult patients with ovarian cancer who have received one to three prior systemic treatment regimens and advice is expected to issue later this year.

The medicine product page on the SMC’s website: mirvetuximab soravtansine (Elahere) will be updated once advice is published.

We have commissioned Healthcare Improvement Scotland to work on the evaluation, in conjunction with Public Health Scotland. Further details of the national evaluation will be shared when available.