InnoScot Health, a formal NHS Scotland partner, has welcomed the planned launch of a new digital inclusion programme by December this year, calling it “a vital first step” towards improving patient care.

The programme is part of the Scottish Government’s Digital Health and Care Strategy, Care in the Digital Age, and covers plans to support new and enhanced services for the NHS through improved systems, infrastructure, and access.

The initiative aims to improve digital access, services, infrastructure, skills, and data management, while also highlighting progress made over the past year in areas like real-time data collection, remote monitoring, and digital maturity assessments.

InnoScot Health emphasises that the most crucial part of this new iteration of the strategy is its digital inclusion programme delivery target, which aims to “support people to access the online services they need in support of their health and wellbeing.”

Launched in August 2023, part of the programme’s initial focus was in identifying barriers to access and how these could be addressed, while developing, testing and implementing ways to help people build digital skills so that they can gain access to an increasing range of health and care services online.

The programme, backed by £2 million in government funding, initially saw 13 ‘Digital Pioneer’ schemes being supported across the country, helping people to access online health and wellbeing services, while a second phase of digital inclusion plans, dubbed Connecting to Care, then began in April this year with seven further projects funded across Scotland.

Head of innovation at InnoScot Health, Robert Rea said: “Successfully fostering digital inclusion across the country is a vital first step if the health service is to achieve maximum engagement with its expanding online services promoting more choice in how the patient manages their own care.”

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Among the technological improvements planned as part of the Digital Health and Care Strategy are an electronic prescribing and medicines administration system for hospitals, a single cloud-hosted national GP IT system, and an automated NHS theatre scheduling system, already piloted by NHS Forth Valley and NHS Lothian, which will remove paper processes, reduce administration and ease patient waiting lists.

Due to be rolled out in the next few years, the ultimate aim of the digital strategy is to allow people to take charge of their own health and reduce pressure on NHS Scotland services by providing tools for self-care.

Fiona Schaefer, innovation manager at InnoScot Health, said: “The collaborative innovation opportunities arising out of the shift to digital services are exciting in so many ways and InnoScot Health is well placed to support the workforce at all levels in realising those ambitions. 

“Strengthening Scotland’s digital health and social care services must be a collective ambition and InnoScot Health shares the key vision for turning it into a reality.”