29 Sep 2021

Industry Briefing with the Director of Digital Health and Care from the Scottish Government

Victoria Betton, Vice-Chair of techUK’s Health & Social Care Council, spoke to Jonathon Cameron, Interim Director of Digital Health and Care for the Scottish Government, about Scotland’s refreshed digital strategy and how the Government has worked to embed learnings from the pandemic across digital health and care.

Jonathon began by providing an overview of the collective focus and unifying objective that arose from the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting that putting people at the heart of this response and adopting a ‘no man left behind’ mantra had been crucial. He noted that, almost overnight, citizens had become data experts, with a notable shift in the market whereby more and more people were demanding to know what was happening with their health data.

As well as providing an overview of Scotland’s upcoming digital health and care strategy, Jonathon spoke to the anticipated launch of a consultation for their upcoming data. This strategy will look to support a continual focus on prevention and inequalities, strengthening links between care at home, housing support, and other aspects of care. It will also reflect an increased emphasis on clinical safety and informatics. Jonathon highlighted that the need to be highly reactive had subsided somewhat, allowing for a clearer focus on transformation. techUK will look to work with industry to respond to this consultation once open.

Among other priorities, Jonathon outlined that the Scottish Government were looking to:

Move forward with open data sharing, supporting users and driving innovation
Promote the Digital Health and Care Innovation Centre as a focal point for new ideas, as well as data lab geared towards supporting SMEs
Promote the CivTech programme, which aims to challenge the innovation process and encourage industry to solve challenges that providers had not been able to, further supporting SMEs in the process
Establish a national digital platform and API gateway that will make it much easier to bring in other systems and other sources
Launch Digital Identity Scotland within the next year
Realise the potential of digital health solutions that facilitate remote health work to support the wider climate response

techUK will look to hold a follow up session with the Digital Health & Care Innovation Centre. If you have any questions regarding this session do not hesitate to get in touch.