About The Right Decision Service

Purpose

The Right Decision Service aims to provide a single Go-To place for:

  • Quality assured decision support resources for Scotland’s health and social care professionals.
  • Tools, guidance and support for Scotland’s health and social care professionals to create decision support resources to defined quality and regulatory standards.

Health and care staff articulated the vision for the Right Decision Service in a national survey and interviews in 2017. This study asked  staff what decision support tools they use at present, how they access them,  and their priorities for future development. 

 

Strategic objectives

The Right Decision Service is a deliverable from the national Decision Support Programme, coordinated by the Scottish Government eHealth Division. Decision support is a key enabler for two major transformational strategies for Scotland’s health and care:

  1. Realistic Medicine

Knowledge and decision support play a key role in delivering the goals of Realistic Medicine:

  • Reducing unwarranted waste, variation and harm.
  • Facilitating shared decision-making and self-management .
  • Putting personal outcomes and values at the heart of decision-making.
  • Fostering continuous improvement and innovation.
  • Enabling proportionate management of risk.
  1. Scotland’s Digital Health and Care Strategy

"The Decision Support Programme aims to deliver on the commitment in this strategy to “expand provision of knowledge mobilisation and decision support tools and services to support frontline practice, self-management, and shared decision-making."

Delivery of the Right Decision Service is supported and funded by three bodies :

  • The Digital Health and Care Institute
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  • The Scottish Government eHealth Division
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  • Scottish Government Modern Outpatient Programme
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A standards-based approach

The Right Decision Service is an exemplar of the digital standards based approach advocated by Scotland’s Digital Health and Care Strategy. The benefits of the standards-based approach are that any decision support tools built to  process patient data will (in principle) be able to interact with:  

  • Any electronic health and care record system.
  • Citizen-held records and citizen-facing portals
  • Data generated by citizens or health and care professionals through mobile apps, hand held devices and sensors

This means that a single consistent source of decision support rules and applications can support self-management, shared decision-making and professional decisions  based on individual needs, across the whole journey of care,  in all sectors and settings.

  •  Resources developed through this platform can be re-used and adapted by other organisations, where the original creator assigns relevant copyright permission. This helps to maximise efficiency and encourage consistency in health and care practice based on best available evidence.