Chamber and committees

All rail connections will be maintained during the closure of the Winchburgh Tunnel. Alternative routes are available for Glasgow to Edinburgh end to end passengers via the Airdrie-Bathgate route with the alternative route for remaining passengers being existing services travelling via Dalmeny.

The Scottish Government has completed an audit of all its directorates and those Agencies and Non Ministerial Departments which share its network. Of the 11,678 computers on the network 9,901 have already been upgraded to Windows 7 and 155 upgraded to Windows 8. The projects to migrate the remaining 1,622 by end March 2014 are well underway.

The Scottish Government investigated a number of options prior to planning for the migration from XP and open source was considered at that time. In 2012 NHSScotland completed a commission to explore the future options for PC software and the potential for open source was part a key of this study.

No central record is maintained of the numbers of computers and their operating systems operated by the agencies themselves.

NHS boards are managing transitional arrangements locally, and ensuring that there are security and monitoring arrangements in place. There is a National Infrastructure Group whose membership is drawn from all NHS boards which works collaboratively to discuss such issues and share practices across the NHSS.

The Scottish Government does not have any plans to introduce a national enhanced service for long-acting reversible contraception. Statutory responsibility for the provision of healthcare services rests with NHS Health Boards and it is for each NHS Board to put in place services that best meet the needs of their patient populations, including this service.

The Scottish Government was not formally consulted in regard to the creation of the Health and Social Care Information Centre (which replaces many of the functions of Connecting for Health). The Scottish Government does however have regular and routine discussions with HSCIC and the Department for Health (England) about a wide range of eHealth policy and Information Governance issues that are of common concern to all parts of the UK.

In 2008, NHS Quality Improvement Scotland published standards for Sexual Health Services, which included a standard that all individuals should have access to intrauterine and implantable methods of contraception. Subsequently, practice in NHSScotland was assessed against these standards and an overview report was published. Since the publication of this report, NHS QIS (now Healthcare Improvement Scotland) has undertaken no further work in this area and currently has no plans to do so.

Scottish Government is working with a number of stakeholders in order to consider how best to increase the uptake of effective contraception. As set out in the Sexual Health and Blood Borne Virus Framework, multi-agency partners should ensure that vulnerable women who are most at risk of unintended pregnancy receive support, advice and, where appropriate, provision of LARC. Provision of LARC will also be considered within the new Teenage Pregnancy and Young Parent strategy, currently in development.

The names of lead Caldicott Guardians in NHSScotland health boards are published on a public web-site.

http://www.knowledge.scot.nhs.uk/caldicottguardians/nhssscotland-caldicott-guardians.aspx.

Data for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde for 2012-13, as published in ISD’s report “Long Acting Reversible Methods of Contraception (LARC)”, are considered to be complete and accurate, so are therefore comparable to other NHS boards. Data for all NHS boards are checked and signed off by the NHS Board Sexual Health Lead.

However, the data for some methods of long-acting reversible contraception from central pharmacies in NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde were incomplete for 2011-12 and are therefore not directly comparable to 2012-13.

The Scottish Government announced in August 2013 that it would be adopting the recommendation that HIV positive health care workers should be permitted to undertake certain, previously restricted, clinical procedures. This policy change will come into effect in 2014.

HIV positive health care workers will be able to undertake previously restricted procedures only if they are on treatment, if their HIV viral load is at a very low or undetectable level, and if they are subject to regular monitoring of their treatment by clinicians.

A specific piece of work to improve the electronic exchange of patient information between primary and secondary care, particularly around medicines information in support of patient safety, was initiated in September 2013. In addition, a new health and social care information sharing strategy will be consulted upon in early 2014, with a view to improving the sharing of information across sectors, in support of integrated health and social care. That will identify the priority areas for the wider sharing of hospital clinical data.

NHSScotland has always had separate arrangements in place for the support of Caldicott Guardians. These arrangements include a National Caldicott Forum, which meets regularly, a Caldicott scrutiny panel that deals with requests to use patient data for a range of purposes and Information Governance and security fora. Each of these has representation from territorial and special boards and are coordinated by Scottish Government officials. Training materials are created or sponsored by Scottish Government, in partnership with boards. In the light of the Caldicott2 Review, and the possibility of the expansion of this community, The Scottish Government is considering how the coordination and training of Caldicotts is best managed across health, local government and elsewhere.