- Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 09 June 2023
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Current Status:
Answered by Lorna Slater on 20 June 2023
To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-15222 by Lorna Slater on 6 March 2023, when it plans to update the guidance to local authorities, and whether it plans for Deposit Return Scheme recycling data to be attributed either to the local authority where a scheme article is returned, or where a recycling facility is located.
Answer
SEPA will ensure that the Official Statistics for household waste which report against the national household waste recycling targets, will include DRS materials once it is implemented.
The DRS scheme has been delayed to October 2025 at the earliest. We are in the process of reviewing the existing guidance with a view to updating it in due course.
- Asked by: Carol Mochan, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
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Date lodged: Thursday, 08 June 2023
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Current Status:
Answered by Michael Matheson on 20 June 2023
To ask the Scottish Government, in relation to its plans to introduce a distinctly Scottish approach to apprenticeships, whether it has any plans to (a) introduce specific apprenticeships for allied health professionals and (b) expand existing bursaries for people to study health professions to also cover allied health professionals.
Answer
The Scottish Government continues to work closely with partners including Higher Education Institutions, Health Boards, Skills Development Scotland, and the Scottish Funding Council on skills development, employability and widening access to NHS Scotland careers, including the development of progressive career opportunities for existing staff and the development of apprenticeship models to provide an ‘earn and learn’ pathway.
1. I refer the member to the recently published recommendations from the Scottish Government’s AHP Education & Workforce Policy Review, which made reference to developing sustainable "earn and learn" routes for the AHP professions in Scotland. This work is being taken forward by the Skills for Health and Social Care Group who are overseeing the development of a suite of progressive career development opportunities for new and existing staff through learn as you earn models. AHPs are represented on this group via the Chief Allied Health Professions Officer and several Scottish Government AHP policy officials.
2. The Scottish Government has protected free tuition for Scottish-domiciled students undertaking under-graduate courses. There is a range of mechanisms to become an AHP at both under-graduate and post-graduate levels. At this moment in time there are no plans to extend bursaries to a wider group of AHPs.
- Asked by: Liam Kerr, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 08 June 2023
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Current Status:
Answered by Gillian Martin on 20 June 2023
To ask the Scottish Government what its assessment is of any requirement for an enabling regulatory environment, which would allow a blockchain-based peer-to-peer energy trading platform to function through the legal recognition and protection of incorporeal moveable property.
Answer
I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-18873 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
- Asked by: Douglas Ross, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 08 June 2023
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Current Status:
Answered by Michael Matheson on 20 June 2023
To ask the Scottish Government how much funding has been allocated to the Technology Enabled Care programme in each year since 2015.
Answer
TEC Funding - Total £70.3 Mil
22-23 - £7.3 Mil
21-22 - £15 Mil
20-21 - £ 9 Mil
19-20 - £7 Mil
18-19 - £7 Mil
17-18 - £7.5 Mil
16-17 - £7.5 Mil
15-16 - £10 Mil
- Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 07 June 2023
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Current Status:
Answered by Michael Matheson on 20 June 2023
To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the commitment in its Care in the Digital Age: Delivery Plan 2022-23, what it has done to develop an effective partnership model, bringing together health and care practitioners, industry, and academia to collaborate to solve key demand-led challenges and support economic growth for Scotland.
Answer
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.
- Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 07 June 2023
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Current Status:
Answered by Michael Matheson on 20 June 2023
To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the commitment in its Care in the Digital Age: Delivery Plan 2022-23, what it has done to deliver improvements to telecare services, such as greater use of proactive wellbeing calls by alarm receiving centres, to telecare users.
Answer
Our primary focus on improving telecare services is in supporting the migration of existing analogue devices to new, more sophisticated, digital devices to ensure telecare services remain fit for purpose following the UK-wide switch-over of telephone lines to a digital infrastructure.
Local Government Digital Office (LGDO) has been commissioned by Scottish Government to lead on this work and are currently taking forward a tender to develop a national digital telecare Alarm Receiving Centre solution that will support a more joined up service across HSCPs (Health and Social Care Partnership) and housing providers offering telecare in Scotland.
In addition, we continue to explore the use of Proactive Telecare in Scotland to deliver a more tailored and preventative service that aims to anticipate and prevent crises and support wellbeing and resilience. This approach has been trialled on a small scale across two phases for which an evaluation is now available . Plans are currently underway to initiate a third phase of Proactive Telecare during 2023-24, reaching more citizens, to fully evaluate the potential and scope for Proactive Telecare as a nationally recommended approach.
- Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 07 June 2023
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Current Status:
Answered by Michael Matheson on 20 June 2023
To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the commitment in its Care in the Digital Age: Delivery Plan 2022-23, whether it has further developed tools to support safer staffing and more flexible workforce arrangements.
Answer
There are a range of different digital tools that already support, or have the potential to support, safer staffing and more flexible working arrangements – by its very nature the use of digital enables new ways of working. This includes, for example, the provision by Health Boards of laptops and remote login access to a number of staff, the roll-out across NHS Scotland of Microsoft Teams and the wider M365 platform that supports flexible communication and collaboration across organisational boundaries, development of decision support tools to support clinical decision making and use of patient-facing tools such as Near Me that do not require staff to remain in a fixed location. Working with the likes of NHS National Services Scotland, we continue to support the development and implementation of further tools in support of the health and social care workforce. This includes the roll out of new GP IT systems, which will better support multi-disciplinary team working in community settings, tools to support better scheduling of appointments and utilisation of theatre and workforce capacity, and rostering tools to better support strategic workforce planning.
- Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 07 June 2023
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Current Status:
Answered by Michael Matheson on 20 June 2023
To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the commitment in its Care in the Digital Age: Delivery Plan 2022-23, what progress has been made to provide health boards with the ability to offer new, more advanced systems for GP practices through the national GP IT programme.
Answer
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.
- Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 07 June 2023
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Current Status:
Answered by Michael Matheson on 20 June 2023
To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the commitment in its Care in the Digital Age: Delivery Plan 2022-23, whether it has improved links between fire safety and telecare services, including publication of new guidance, clarifying the responsibilities of telecare services in relation to the new legislation, developing guidance and supporting good practice in implementation.
Answer
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
- Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 07 June 2023
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Current Status:
Answered by Michael Matheson on 20 June 2023
To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the commitment in its Care in the Digital Age: Delivery Plan 2022-23, whether it has established a new national information governance programme to address the recommendations of the Information Governance Review executive summary.
Answer
Yes. Our National Information Governance Plan has been established in support of the Data Strategy for Health and Social Care, based on the recommendations of the Information Governance Review. The overall work includes a refresh of the Information Governance Framework.
