Chamber and committees

Bute House has an EPC rating of D.

The EPC is listed on the Scottish EPC register under 6 Charlotte Square, Edinburgh EH2 4DR. Reference Number 6810-1931-5439-2403-6002.

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).

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

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 Government has developed, in partnership with the NHS, the Accelerated National Innovation Adoption (ANIA) pathway and Innovation Design Authority (IDA). They provide a once for Scotland approach to the identification, assessment, and accelerated adoption of innovative technologies within the NHS. The IDA brings together key Scottish Government and NHS in Scotland decision makers to collectively agree priorities and approve high impact innovations for accelerated national adoption. ANIA harnesses the expertise and capabilities of our national Health Boards to support decision making and overcome barriers to adoption. Innovations are assessed against impact on health outcomes, patient experience, workforce, financial sustainability, and carbon reduction.

ANIA is fed by the end-to-end innovation pathway supported from the Office of the Chief Scientist (Health), and delivered in partnership with the NHS, academia, and industry. This includes translational research, our three regional NHS Innovation Hubs, Open Innovation Competitions, and innovation fellowships.

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.

We have implemented the ability to share the Scottish Ambulance Service (SAS) electronic patient record (ePR) with General Practice. All Health Boards (with the exception of NHS Shetland) now have this in place.

Ongoing monitoring of implementation and engagement with NHS Shetland is underway to identify actions required to progress. This work is now being incorporated into the Urgent and Unscheduled Care collaborative programme.

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 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.

This information is not held centrally by the Scottish Government.