Human Rights Principles in Digital Health and Social Care
The ALLIANCE, Scottish Care and VOX Scotland champion five principles for a human rights based approach to digital health and social care.
The Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland (the ALLIANCE), Scottish Care and VOX Scotland(Voices Of eXperience) revisited our Digital Health and Social Care Human Rights Principles, launching revised principles in October 2025. Collaboratively we have developed a set of principles which can support shaping a human rights based approach to digital health and social care policy and practice across Scotland.
We have also created supported guidance, for both people and professionals who wish to embed the principles into digital service design and delivery.
How were they shaped and created
Between March and July 2025 we ran in person and online engagement sessions to capture people’s opinions, insights and experiences around accessing and providing digital health and social care support services. This engagement informed us the existing principles needed revised, with clear direction and wording provided by people with lived experience.
In September we tested the revised principles and after further refining we launched them in October 2025 at our DiGiTal Get Together: How to Stay Human Rights Focused in a Digital Scotland event
Next steps
We have already started working with partners to further embed a human rights based approach to digital practice, having delivered webinars, presentations at online and in-person events and we continue to work with people (including the Digital Citizen Panel) to raise awareness of the principles and to consider them when accessing health and social care services. We need to focus on updating our online training for people and professionals- including Turas, SSSC badges and OpenLearn Create for the revised principle, which we will share links for here when this work is complete.
Would you like to learn more?
Please contact the Digital Health and Social Care Team at the ALLIANCE.
About the partners
Use the following links to find out more about the organisations involved in this work:
- The Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland (the ALLIANCE)
- Scottish Care (this link will take you away from our website)
- VOX (Voices Of eXperience) (this link will take you away from our website)
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