Attend Anywhere / Near Me video consulting service evaluation 2019-2020: summary report

Introduction

Attend Anywhere is a video consultations service used across health and care services in Scotland. In July 2019 the Scottish Government commissioned the University of Oxford (Department of Primary Care Health Sciences) to undertake an independent evaluation of the service. The aim of the evaluation was to review progress and achievements in relation to the use and outcomes of Attend Anywhere, and to develop an understanding of the implementation experience to date. We also sought to make recommendations relevant to any future scaling-up, spread and sustainability of Attend Anywhere and similar digital services. The field work was done between August 2019 and early March 2020, before the COVID-19 outbreak.

Attend Anywhere is the name of the video consultations platform, purpose-built to meet the needs of the health and care sectors, for which a national licence has been procured for Scotland.

Near Me is now the public-facing name used to describe video consulting services provided via the Attend Anywhere platform in Scotland. This name was developed by patients in NHS Highland, and was not in universal use across Scotland at the time of the fieldwork for this evaluation.

For the purposes of this evaluation report, the term 'Attend Anywhere' is generally used, unless research participants referred specifically to 'Near Me'.