Digital on demandInitially introduced to send COVID-19 test results to citizens, the system also can also send patient questionnaires, enable digital appointments, and send other types of results and information to patients. Pilots are underway in relation to these capabilities. This will enable us to undertake digital interactions with citizens and meet their expectations of modern online services.
Citizen access
Giving citizens increasing input and better insight into the decisions associated with their treatment and care is a key priority for NHSGGC. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated progress and increased citizens’ expectations of how they can interact with their personal healthcare.
Our vision is for citizens to access and contribute to their own health record online. This will be accompanied where appropriate by a transition from traditional face-to-face interactions. This will offer a more integrated digital experience for citizens and care providers, while maintaining alternatives for people without digital access or confidence.
We want to empower people to interact with their personal data and utilise technology to better manage their health and wellbeing. We want to enable citizens to access clinical and community health and wellbeing services, manage appointments, and access tools and information to manage their personal health and wellbeing online.
We will offer options for how citizens communicate with NHSGGC and how our care teams deliver appointments, consultations and care. Options include, but are not limited to: telephone, live or recorded video, walk-in and “asynchronous” – which allows citizens and care professionals to communicate remotely, at times that suit both.
NHSGGC is playing a pivotal role in supporting the development of a fully interactive national “Digital Front Door”:
- Implementing tools to enable citizens to self- manage their conditions
- Providing online and mobile access to information and their personal data
- Receiving and interacting with online appointments and related information
- Facilitating telemedicine and remote consultations
NHSGGC will introduce patient remote pathways developed via the IHC Platform. This allows patients to send clinical and other information via text or app, enabling clinicians to review the responses virtually and develop appropriate treatment plans. Pilots are underway using this technology for blood pressure monitoring and heart failure.
HDE provides a secure and standardised way of managing identity (login) and consented data sharing. HDE is already supporting WoS Innovation Hub projects including Dynamic Scot COPD, Heart Failure and OPTIMAL Osteoporosis risk stratification. This allows different applications to interact securely with our core systems such as Clinical Portal, and provides flexibility to add new and more specialised components to our DHCR as and when they are required.
This provides patients undergoing treatment for cancer with a summary when a planned schedule of care comes to an end. This outlines the procedures carried out, symptoms to be aware of, medications and key contact details. It can be printed out or electronically delivered to citizens.
Glasgow has the most diverse population in Scotland. It is essential that we ensure digital equality for all our citizens while avoiding citizens and staff feeling left behind. We will ensure that people who cannot access digital services are able to communicate and interact with health care in other ways.
In addition to the Equality Impact Assessments (EQIA) produced by individual programmes, an EQIA has been developed for the digital strategy itself.
We engaged with a wide range of stakeholders to explore the opportunities and challenges associated with digital equality.
We aim to:
- Promote equality of opportunity and engagement
- Ensure equality of access for people with protected characteristics and other marginalised groups
- Capture the data required to measure and improve digital equality
- Design, structure and store data to respect equality rights including gender sensitivity
- Continue to improve systems and online information to be accessible for everyone
We will design for digital equality from the start, including the requirement for non-digital alternatives if needed, language translation where appropriate and non-gender bias as standard. Core systems and data will continue to be developed to be more equality-sensitive, with gender/sex/ethnicity standards that can be adopted across our services.
We know from demographic analysis and recent experience of connectivity during the COVID-19 Pandemic that some communities experience disproportionate levels of digital exclusion. This is primarily due to language and communication barriers associated with the protected characteristics of Race, Disability and Age but also because of poverty, which is an inhibitor when considering digital inclusion/exclusion.
The Strategy and aligned programmes of work will be subject to equalities impact assessment, and proportionate adjustments will be made to ensure that investment in digital development does not exacerbate the experience of inequality across protected characteristic groups. This will enable NHSGGC to transform the way we deliver care while ensuring no-one is left behind.
We will work in partnership with citizens and staff to find practical ways to listen to and learn from citizens and staff, to involve them on an ongoing basis as part of our digital solution/service design. For example, over 700 citizens responded to an online survey to share their experience of medicines processes, and help us identify priorities for improvement as part of the eMedicines Programme.
The Scottish Approach to Service Design vision will be adopted: “that the people of Scotland are supported and empowered to actively participate in the definition, design and delivery of their public services”.
The Digital Strategy has been developed by following guidance provided by the NHSGGC Equality Team and EQIA framework. We have produced a series of stories that reflect the needs and experience of citizens and staff. This process was inclusive and designed to reflect the diverse needs of many groups. The stories will be collected into a ‘living library’ that shows the diversity and range of what digital technology enables across NHSGGC, both now and in the future. We will continue to record these stories on an ongoing basis.