- Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
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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 work it has done with senior leaders within health and social care to develop the skills needed to embed digital technology and literacy across their organisations.
Answer
We have recently agreed the arrangement for a new post-graduate course in Scotland. The 'Leading Digital Transformation in Health and Care' (MSc) will provide up to 60 funded places aimed at senior and aspiring leaders across the health and social care sector. Year one commences in April 2023.
Work is also underway designing the 'Executive Leadership in a Digital Age' Masterclass programme. This will equip Board-level executives and non-executives with the necessary understanding of digital health, governance and leadership skills to support transforming service delivery.
- Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
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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 fully digital clinical and care services, treatment and support it has introduced since October 2021.
Answer
People can access a range of different services digitally if they choose to. These include digital for mental health, self-help guides on NHS inform, Care Information Scotland and remote monitoring of conditions from home.
I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-14098 on 27 January 2023 which provides further detail on the work being taken forward within digital mental health services and the progress made in supporting access to services.
- Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
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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
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Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
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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.
- Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
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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 spent on enabling people to (a) book/rearrange appointments, (b) order prescriptions, (c) update their details and (d) generally conduct all routine "transactions" online.
Answer
I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-13979 on 30 January 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
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Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
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Current Status:
Answered by Humza Yousaf on 2 February 2023
To ask the Scottish Government how it is ensuring that (a) consistent and (b) tailored digital skills learning and development on accessible platforms exist for all health and care staff.
Answer
Currently, staff can access digital skills learning and development resources through the Turas platform managed and run by NHS National Education for Scotland, and through the skills platform of SSSC. Work is underway on reviewing the accessibility of this, with a view to considering the creation of a Central Library of Digital Skills Resource. This work aims to understand the user needs in relation to digital confidence, accessing technology and building digital skills. It is tailored to the requirements of specific roles to enhance career progression for all staff across health and care. We will work with our wide range of partners across health and care to ensure effective communication of this resource and that it complements existing resources.
- Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
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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 many health and social care staff do not currently have the essential digital skills that they need to do their job, broken down by NHS board.
Answer
The Scottish Government does not hold this information. This is a matter for individual NHS Boards.
- Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
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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 spent on supporting health and social care organisations to have access to the basic resources required to develop as digital organisations, broken down by organisation.
Answer
Supporting health and social care organisations to develop as digital organisations takes the form of many different resources and initiatives. This includes, for example, development of guides such as the Digital Telecare Playbook that supports organisations manage the transition to digital telecare. It also includes the skills of staff, and investment in basic infrastructure such as web cameras to enable use of Near Me. These costs are built into budgets for national programmes, and into local organisations budgets for the delivery of digital developments. It is therefore not possible to breakdown funding. This year, in 2022-23 as part of the overall health portfolio investment, we are investing £99.6 million in digital health and care. This covers a huge amount of work ‘behind the scenes’ that is needed to modernise our health and care systems.
This investment in our systems – and the required cyber security, the training of staff to use the systems and the ongoing maintenance and development – takes up most of our budget. The 2022-23 Delivery plan provides further detail on spend across the Digital Health and Care directorate in its support of health and care organisations.
- Asked by: Craig Hoy, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
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Current Status:
Answered by Humza Yousaf on 2 February 2023
To ask the Scottish Government what it has done to modernise its core health and care business systems.
Answer
Scottish Government is undertaking a wide range of digital programmes to support partners including work on Microsoft 365, the roll out Hospital Electronic Prescribing and Medicines Administration (HEPMA),the rollout of new General Practice IT systems, development of the National Digital Platform and Digital Diagnostics. Delivery is ongoing, as set out in the annual delivery plan for Digital Health & Care (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
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Date lodged: Thursday, 19 January 2023
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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.
