- 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.
Answer
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) ).
- 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.
Answer
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.
- 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 develop career development opportunities within the specialist digital, data, design and technology (DDAT) professional workforce within health and social care.
Answer
We are in the process of exploring the feasibility of how we can embed the DDaT Framework into all NHS Scotland Health Boards. This is being discussed collaboratively across health and social care in Scotland and with NHS England to share experiences of ongoing developments and avoid potential duplication of effort.
The DDaT Framework will help provide consistency across health and social care organisations in ongoing development and access to learning resources. It will also enable us to explore a common definition of job roles and align to workforce competition across all sectors in recruitment and retention.
- 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, which health and social care organisations it has provided support to in order to have access to the basic resources required to develop as digital organisations.
Answer
Scottish Government consistently provides funding and support to all Health Boards. We also fund work within the Alliance, Scottish Federation of Housing Associations and others.
- 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 whether it has developed a safety case for all major health and care systems, and, if so, what approach it followed to design these.
Answer
Currently, several key national programmes have undertaken safety cases - this includes the national vaccination programme and work on Connect me (remote health monitoring). More broadly, we are currently developing our national policy approach to safety cases within digital health and care. This will be developed in line with national work being taken forward through the Scottish Patient Safety Programme.
- 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.
Answer
Whilst recruitment is the responsibility of the employing health and social care organisation, the Scottish Government, COSLA and the Local Government Digital Office are currently considering how to best apply the DDaT Professional Framework to the health and social care sector.
- 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.
Answer
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.
- 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 often it (a) reviews and (b) publishes its
approach to ensuring any new technologies used in health and care comply with
its technical, data and design standards, and when it last did so.
Answer
There are existing organisations that evaluate new technologies including Scottish Health Technologies Group. Scottish Government operates a robust governance structure to review and support compliance of new and existing technologies. All programmes are required to comply with UK standards including those set by MHRA and ICO.The 2022-23 Delivery plan sets out further ambitions for our approach to digital futures.
- 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, how much it has invested in information governance and cyber skills within health and social care.
Answer
The Scottish Government is supporting staff to develop digital skills through the Building Digital Skills and Leadership Programme.
Specifically, to support IG and cyber security across health and social care, the Scottish Government has provided funding to NHS boards for programmes of work specifically relating to Information Governance and Security. For example:
- The National IG Programme
- The Digital Workforce Programme
- NIS Competent Authority for Health.
This is in addition to bespoke spends on this topic area, such as the Public Sector Cyber Upskilling fund, which was targeted at Emergency Services, Local Authorities, Health Sector, SEPA and Scottish Water.
As these programmes often rely on appropriate use of allocated funding to NHS boards, we do not hold information centrally on the amount specifically on the development of information governance and cyber skills.
For more information on the Building Digital Skills and Leadership Programme, I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-14150 on 2 February 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: 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 what action it has taken to improve the (a) security capabilities and (b) resilience of its health and social care services’ digital systems.
Answer
The Scottish Government actively promotes cyber security in order to reduce the risk of cyber-attacks and protect against the unauthorised exploitation of systems, networks and technologies. We promote best practice, regulatory requirements, and global international standards for the improvement of Cyber security practices.
For the NHS, each Health Board must report improvements to resilience and capabilities to the Scottish Government through regulatory audits. In doing so the Scottish Government is able to monitor continual improvements by Boards against the Scottish Public Sector Cyber Resilience Framework.
The Scottish Government, have also established the Cyber Centre of Excellence to enhance its response to security. This will enable Scotland-wide management of cyber security services, that can be proactively, securely and consistently delivered across the NHS.
Additionally, supporting the adoption of Microsoft Office 365 across the health and care sector allows organisations to make use of the most up to date threat protection available from a trusted supplier.
