A new e-health strategy for Scotland has been launched by the Scottish Government as part of a national healthcare action plan, Better Health, Better Care.
The new strategy builds on Scotland’s approach to deploying and merging technology.
The action plan states: “We do not plan to produce some large single database of patient information but will join up systems where there are clear benefits from doing so.”
Key features include:
• Action around the three themes of supporting safe, effective, timely and efficient patient care, contributing to equitable, patient centred care and improving e-health capacity;
• A vision of reduced paper and increasing use by clinicians of secure IT to access the right information in the right place at the right time;
• A clear focus on patient safety, safeguarding confidentiality, evidence based care and more efficient management of the patient's journey through care;
• A new emphasis on 'patient e-health', initially focused on long-term conditions, with trials of patient/carer online access to their records along with knowledge to promote self and collaborative care.
There has been some significant progress made in e-health, including the Emergency Care Summary. This contains key clinical information for over 5.1 million patients and is currently used around 25,000 times per week, if the patient explicitly consents, by clinicians in out-of-hours GP services, A&E departments and NHS24.
The plan also points out: “Use of the Community Health Index (CHI) number on the 10 key clinical documents for communication between GPs and acute hospitals has increased from 70% in November 2006 to 94% in December 2007 and it now used on 94% of community-held case records, up from 86% in April 2007.”
The Scottish Government has also pledged to continue supporting the Scottish Centre for Telehealth.
Future phases will involve the delivery of a remote diagnostic service from Inverness to Stornoway and a remote review appointment service to a local community hospital for patients who have had surgery, radio or chemotherapy for head and neck tumours.
