Welcome to the Right Decision Service (RDS) newsletter for October 2024.
Development of the contingency solutions to maximise RDS resilience and minimise risk of future outages is in progress, aiming for completion by Christmas. As a reminder, these contingency arrangements are:
In the meantime, a gentle reminder to encourage users to download essential clinical toolkits to their mobile devices so that there is an offline version always available.
A new scheduled deployment with minor improvements drawn from support tickets, externally funded projects, information related to outages, and feature requests will take place in early December. Key improvements planned are:
We are also seeking approval to use the NHS Scotland logo and title for the RDS app on the app stores to help with audience engagement and clarity around the provenance of RDS.
We are still hopeful that user acceptance testing for at least the Search and browse enhancements can take place before Christmas. Thank you for your patience and understanding in waiting for these improvements. Timescales have been pushed back by old app migration challenges, work to address outages, and most recently implementing the contingency arrangements.
We are aware that there continue to be some issues around a number of RDS support tickets, in part due to constraints around visibility for the RDS team of the tickets in the existing support portal. We are investigating the potential to move to a new support ticket requesting system from early in the new year. We will organise the proposed webinar around support ticket processes once we have confirmed the way forward with the system.
There is a known issue with alterations in formatting of some RDS tables which seems to have arisen as a result of the 17 October deployment. Tactuum is working on a fix and on implementing additional regression testing to prevent this issue recurring.
Recently launched toolkits include:
NHS Lothian Infectious Diseases
Scottish Health Technologies Group – Technology Assessment recommendations
NHS Tayside Anaesthetics and Critical Care projects – an innovative toolkit which uses PowerAutomate to manage review and response to proposals for improvement projects.
If you would like to promote one of your new toolkits through this newsletter, please contact ann.wales3@nhs.scot
A number of toolkits are expected to go live before Christmas, including:
We have had a good response to the recent invitation to sign up to the new Teams channel for RDS editors. This provides a forum for editors to share learning, ideas and questions and we hope to hold regular webinars on topics of interest. The RDS team is in the process of joining participants to the channel and we’d encourage all editors to take part, using the registration form – available in Providers section of the RDS Learning and Support area.
The RDS team has worked with colleagues in NHS Grampian and the Digital Health & Care Innovation Centre to evaluate the impact of the Prevent the progress of diabetes web and mobile app in a small-scale pilot project. This app provides access to local and national resources and services targeted at people with prediabetes, a history of gestational diabetes, or candidates for remission. After just 8 weeks of using the app, 94% of patients reported increased their knowledge and understanding of diabetes, and 88% said it had increased their confidence and motivation to make lifestyle changes, highlighting specific behaviour changes. The learning from this project is informing development of a service model based on tailored support for patient groups with, high, medium and low digital self-efficacy.
Please contact ann.wales3@nhs.scot if you would like to know more about this project.
To book a place, please contact Olivia.graham@nhs.scot, providing your name, organisation, job role, and level of experience with RDS editing (none, a little, moderate, extensive.)
To invite colleagues to sign up to receive this newsletter, please signpost them to the registration form - also available in End-user and Provider sections of the RDS Learning and Support area. If you have any questions about the content of this newsletter, please contact his.decisionsupport@nhs.scot If you would prefer not to receive future newsletters, please email Olivia.graham@nhs.scot and ask to be removed from the circulation list.
With kind regards
Right Decision Service team
Healthcare Improvement Scotland
The Right Decision Service: the national decision support platform for Scotland’s health and care
Website: https://rightdecisions.scot.nhs.uk Mobile app download: Apple Android
The ageing well toolkit supports health and social care staff and their patients to have conversations and make informed decisions about ageing well. It also provides public advice and support on how to age well. It includes:
The resources in the toolkit are split into a professional section and a public section. Each section provides local and national resources. The public section contains resources for anyone to access and the professional section is aimed at health and social care staff as well as students.
The resources in this toolkit have been split into five themes. These themes are similar to the Open University five pillars of ageing well: Take five to age well: empowering the UK towards longer, healthier lives. The five themes of ageing well in this toolkit are:
The toolkit is part of the frailty work in Dumfries and Galloway and is a way of using digital solutions to improve access to information about ageing well and help people make decisions about the care they deliver and receive.
It is a partnership project between NHS Dumfries and Galloway, Public Health Scotland and Healthcare Improvement Scotland using the Right Decision Service (RDS) platform.
The key contact for this toolkit is the Lead AHP - Community Health & Social Care in NHS Dumfries and Galloway - email.
An accessibility check of the toolkit was done in September 2024 using the RDS standard operating procedure. The accessibility of the RDS platform technology is confirmed in the RDS accessibility statement at the bottom of every website page.
Various clinicians have been involved in sourcing and evaluating resources to include in the toolkit as well as writing content for the toolkit and designing it. The toolkit belongs to NHS Dumfries and Galloway and their contribution has been greatest. There has also been input to content by Public Health Scotland through the partnership approach. The NHS Dumfries and Galloway frailty steering group provided clinical sign-off of content in the toolkit.
When future changes to toolkit design or content are suggested the AHP lead will decide if the change is minor or major. When changes are minor, they will be approved by the AHP lead and when they are major, they will be approved by the relevant governance group. The toolkit will be reviewed every two years from publication. The AHP Lead will notify the RDS team of required changes, and they will update the toolkit in an appropriate timeframe.
The operational leadership for the toolkit is the NHS Dumfries and Galloway lead AHP, governance of content is overseen by the NHS Dumfries and Galloway frailty steering group, and the digital elements of the toolkit are overseen by the NHS Dumfries and Galloway digital steering group.
Copyright permissions were checked for content linked to in the toolkit and no issues were identified.
All icons are sourced from Flaticon.com, accessed through the licence held by Tactuum Ltd as software provider of the RDS platform.
Feedback and complaints should be sent to team mailbox where they will be processed and responded to. Feedback received will be addressed by the Lead AHP and if significant changes are required, they will be escalated to the appropriate governance group.
The content has been risk assessed:
Functional testing, usability testing and user acceptance testing of the website and app was carried out between 23 September and 22 October 2024. Minor changes were approved by the AHP lead following the feedback and the toolkit updated prior to publication.
Ageing well