Implementing the Digital Health and Care strategy across the third sector

Follow up to the event where the third sector explored how it could help implement Scotland's new Digital Health and Care Strategy.

Last month, the ALLIANCE in partnership with SCVO, CCPS and vhs ran a collaborative event where almost 100 delegates discussed how the third sector can help achieve the ambitions in Scotland’s new Digital health and care strategy.  Below is a snapshot of the day and some follow up steps that are now being progressed.

We heard from Alzheimer Scotland, Cornerstone, Food Train and Breast Cancer Care who showcased the great work and the very diverse use of digital in the third sector to transform services.
Given the level of delegate interest, we will continue to profile third sector examples, share learning and publicise opportunities on this topic, to help support organisations use digital for service transformation.

Practical examples from SSSC, Marie Curie and SOL Connect also illustrated why digital skills are vital for the third sector health and social care workforce and how they can be developed effectively to support service delivery.  More will need to be done across the sector to bolster this crucial element of skills.
And if you’re involved in social care, you can help maintain the momentum on this by attending CCPS’ Digital Technology and the Social Care Workforce 30 Oct event (this link will take you away from our website)

Likewise, a workshop led by SCVO and Learning Link looked at how to embed cyber resilience in third sector organisations, drawing for instance on relevant case studies.
Feedback suggests sharing further good practice in this area will help.
And so this will be part of a wider programme of awareness-raising from the new third sector ‘cyber catalysts’ (which include SCVO, Alzheimer Scotland, Food Train, the ALLIANCE and others).  Watch out for further information on this and please spread the word on cyber resilience within your own organisation.

Barnardo’s gave a fascinating account of their journey to date with data sharing. Delegates then brainstormed what steps would help address their own needs around sharing information with other organisations. Interestingly, most of their feedback suggested Scotland should move to a model where an individual ‘controlled’ their health and care data (and then determined which organisations it was shared with). Delegates felt this ‘person-driven’ data approach could better enable the third sector to access and share data. In turn, bringing more joined up services (across sectors) for individuals plus gains in service improvement/research.
As a result, we will explore how this kind of data sharing could be made a reality involving the third sector and public as part of wider dialogue on health and care data use.

We will also consider this within the context of technological evolution, liaising for instance with NES’ Digital Service. At the event, they gave more detail on the future longer term ‘national digital platform’ which will connect digital solutions and support data sharing across Scotland.  It’s clear the third sector must link into this major development and feed into related governance.
So we will work collaboratively to facilitate this interaction. Alongside this, we will also produce practical material to support the third sector’s capacity to integrate their digital solutions and data.

A huge thanks again to everyone who participated on the day.  The full presentations are available below.

There is a lot more to do. Please check our web pages for further updates and opportunities to engage on and implement digital health and care.

End of page.