Digital Health and Social Care programme review 2022

The Digital Health and Social Care team launched new grants to improve access barriers to digital health and social care services.

In 2022, the Digital Citizen Panel (DCP) continues to develop, creating new opportunities for its members, delivering monthly Conversation Cafes and Informal Learning Sessions. Its evaluation report highlighted its strong foundations saying the DCP offers a ‘platform to share’ and supported people to feel ‘empowered to act.’ One stakeholder stated that when engaging with the Digital Citizen Panel they ‘had a really interesting and positive session and was delighted to be able to make some changes that may provide a better user experience as a result.’

Engagement sessions have supported in shaping and influencing many strands of Scottish Government work and policy, including Digital Inclusion, Digital Front Door and the Data Strategy for Health and Social Care. Beyond DCP activity, we ensured that our members voices were included in the strategy development and responded to the Scottish Government’s consultation, calling for human rights, trust and transparency.

In February, the Discover Digital project wrapped up the small grants scheme and reflected on inclusion in digital health and social care. With the importance of skills, confidence and motivation highlighted as key barriers by the funded organisations.

In May the mPower project came to an end after five years and the ALLIANCE delivered a legacy project in North, East and South Ayrshire. We worked with libraries and communities to form three place-based initiatives to help people to use digital tools for health and wellbeing. Our findings aim to help other organisations run similar initiatives in their local areas.

In 2022 we championed a human rights-based approach to digital health and social care and engaged with citizens and stakeholders on key innovations across Scotland. Throughout the year, we continued to raise awareness of our Human Rights Principles in Digital Health and Social Care. From bringing together organisations that were championing the principles in practice. Delivering a keynote presentation to industry at the IT4Anxiety Hackathon. To highlighting the importance of a human rights-based approach to attendees of the VHS and DigiFest conferences

The end of 2022 saw the Discover Digital project enter an exciting new phase. We opened the Inclusion and Participation Grants, offering two levels of grant funding to tackle access barriers to digital health and social care. Nine organisations have been funded and we are looking forward to working with them in the new year and beyond. We also recognised the importance of rewarding social care staff for further learning and development and in December 2022 launched our Open Badges for Discover Digital and the Human Rights Principles.

We have created a varied Discover Digital Roadshow package, which will be launched early next year, presenting more opportunities for local communities and staff to learn about digital health and social care.

To be a part of helping to shape digital health and social care innovation in Scotland. Get involved in our upcoming opportunities by keeping an eye on our web pages and following us on Twitter.

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