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
DGRefHelp is a resource to guide referring clinicians in Dumfries and Galloway on locally agreed referral pathways. The advice contained may not be directly relevant to other areas and is not intended for use by members of the public.
Programme Manager - Lynda Forrest - lynda.forrest2@nhs.scot
Clinical Editor and Senior Responsible Officer - Fergus Donachie - fergus.donachie@nhs.scot
Secondary care interface lead - Gwyneth Jones - gwyneth.jones@nhs.scot
Chair of Realistic Medicine board - Stephen Wilson - stephen.wilson6@nhs.scot
Generic email for feedback and comments - dg.refhelp@nhs.scot
New content is checked for accessibility in line with relevant RDS standard operating procedure and tested using Wave accessibility tool
Content ported from our previous platform in pdf format may not meet web accessibility standards but will be updated before 1/1/2026.
Content in this toolkit has been authored by clinicians in Dumfries and Galloway and edited in conjunction with the authors by the clinical editor.
Content is reviewed and approved by the Realistic and Value Based Medicine Group of Dumfries and Galloway HSCP. Content is reviewed and feedback sought from GP Sub-committee, NHS D&G Interface group and Area Drugs and Therapeutic Committee as appropriate prior to approval.
Content is reviewed for update every 2 years. Automated RDS alerts are sent to authors and Programme manager and clinical editor 3 months before review due date. Minor updates are dealt with in the intervening period as needed, major updates are subject to the governance process above.
All icons are from Flaticon.com, accessed through the licence held Tactuum Ltd for the resources supported by the software platform it provides.
Many pathways are developed directly from national pathways or guidance from Centre for Sustainable Delivery, SIGN, SIGN, Scottish Cancer Guidelines and where this is the case the original source will be linked in the pathway.
Where the pathway is not a local implementation of a National pathway, any existing guidance on the topic from these national bodies will be searched to ensure it is consistent with national guidance.
The generic email for DGRefHelp is listed on every main page for feedback and comments and is directed to the programme manager and clinical editor. All feedback is reviewed and actioned as appropriate.
The toolkit has been risk assessed, and mitigations put in place where required.
The DGRefHelp team is not responsible for the content of any external links.
Functional testing, usability testing and user acceptance testing was carried out by a small group of stakeholders from the D&G GP sub-committee in December 2022 and feedback used to adapt the format for content. Every new page is reviewed for usability and relevance of content by a user group consisting of GP Sub-committee members, Interface group and Realistic Medicine leads.
DGRefHelp - NHS Dumfries & Galloway