Delivery of eHealth Strategy 2011-17 Progress Report 2011-13

1 - eHealth in Scotland

The eHealth strategy 2011-17^[1] sets the agreed direction and goals for an incremental approach to technology enabled change across the NHS in Scotland. This is the second strategy, and builds on direction and achievements of its predecessor which ran from 2008 to 2011. The original strategy focused on the development and implementation of technology products and services, and this second strategy seeks to focus on outcomes and deliverable benefits to clinicians and patients.

The 2011-17 strategy was developed as a partnership between NHS Boards and the Scottish Government, with partnership governance structures (included at Annex A) underpinning the collective endeavour required to deliver on its aims, which are to:

1. Maximise efficient working practices, minimise wasteful variation, bring about measurable savings and ensure value for money
2. Support people to communicate with NHS Scotland, manage their own health and wellbeing, and to become more active participants in the care and services they receive
3. Contribute to care integration and to support people with long term conditions
4. Improve the availability of appropriate information for healthcare workers and the tools to use and communicate that information effectively to improve quality
5. Improve the safety of people taking medicines and their effective use
6. To use information and technology in a co-ordinated way to provide clinical and other local managers across the health and social care spectrum with the timely management information they need to inform their decisions on service quality, performance and delivery

The strategy is supported by the Infrastructure^[2], Applications^[3], Information Assurance^[4] strategies and the eHealth Finance Strategy 2011-17^[5].

Each NHS Board has developed an outcomes-focussed eHealth plan, which sets out how they will meet the eHealth strategic aims. Progress is monitored via:

• an annual end-year and mid-year review cycle, conducted between each NHS Board and the Scottish Government eHealth Division
• reporting against common progress measures, derived from the common elements across all plans
• the various governance groups, including clinical leads from each Board, and eHealth Leads from each Board.

This report focusses on eHealth activity across NHS Scotland in support of the strategy since its publication in 2011. We have focussed on the major developments, but there has been excellent progress at local and national level in progressing the overall aims of the eHealth Strategy.

Future reports will be annual, with the next report covering 2013-14.