Strategic drivers

Launched in 2018, the NHSGGC Moving Forward Together programme is a whole-system approach to planning services covering acute hospital care, community services and primary care in order to improve care and outcomes.

The MFT Portfolio of Projects comprises a range of short, medium and longer term initiatives including development of new ways of working which provide safe, effective and patient-centred care. The Digital Strategy aligns with MFT over the coming five years, making best use of available resources and the opportunities created by innovation and technology.

NHSGGC is developing a whole-system infrastructure strategy with a 20–30-year outlook, building on the progress made by the Moving Forward Together programme.

The strategy will identify a programme of short-, medium- and long-term investment requirements designed to transform the NHSGGC infrastructure arrangements so that they better meet the challenges faced and support the transformation of clinical services.

Key strategic service changes that would deliver greatest impact for our population will be identified, along with how changes to our infrastructure can support this redesign over the longer term. This work will identify new innovations and digital opportunities coming onto the horizon since the COVID-19 pandemic, consider the impact of new national proposals for Diagnostic Hubs, explore how Community Hubs could help in coordinating care across a broad range of services, and make proposals for where complex specialist care is best located.

eHealth is contributing to the development of the MFTi strategy to ensure that the digital dimension is built in to short, medium and long-term plans. Alongside the MFTi strategy, this digital strategy will support and enable the wider transformational change sought over the short, medium and long term:

• New and innovative methods of delivering care to patients, for example remote consultations and virtual clinics
• New approaches to how and where we work
• Improving patient access to services and information while eliminating inequalities to that access
• Enabling self-diagnosis, treatment and care
• The move towards “smarter buildings”
• Transformation of how we use, manage and operate space

Several HSCPs including East Dunbartonshire, East Renfrewshire and Renfrewshire have recently updated their strategic plans. A consistent aim throughout is the ambition to maximise the benefits of digital technology to support the delivery of care. Several common themes have emerged, including:

• Citizen access to services and information
• Supporting virtual consultations
• Digital skills, equality and inclusion
• Preventing digital exclusion
• Enabling citizen independence and self-management
• Joining up processes, services and systems between social care and health

NHSGGC Sustainable Development and Net Zero transformation is driven by the Scottish Government’s ambitious targets, driven by the climate emergency, mandating the public sector to achieve Net Zero by 2045. NHS Scotland has gone one step further and tasked territorial Health Boards to become net zero by 2040 across all our scoped emissions and Net Zero in how we heat and power our buildings by 2038.

NHSGGC goal is to improve the environmental, financial and social performance of its assets and services for our patients, staff and visitors through continuous improvement, in turn achieving carbon reduction targets.

This strategy describes a digital-first approach to engagement which will be used in addition to traditional non face-to-face methods, allowing NHSGGC to deliver a blended approach to tailoring engagement to best suit the needs of stakeholders. The digital strategy and delivery plan will support this digital-first approach.

Expectations of citizens and staff regarding Digital have changed, in what some describe as a “paradigm shift” due to the pandemic. Remote working and remote consultation have cemented themselves as permanent fixtures as part of day-to-day healthcare and we now rely on them even more than before the COVID-19 pandemic. We have learned many lessons from the experience, which will inform our next five years of strategic focus.

Scottish Government and COSLA have recently published Scotland’s Digital Health and Care Strategy, Enabling, Connecting and Empowering: Care in the Digital Age. This presents the vision “To improve the care and wellbeing of people in Scotland by making best use of digital technologies in the design and delivery of services”.

The strategy identifies the following key aims:

1. Citizens have access to, and greater control over, their own health and care data – as well as access to the digital information, tools and services they need to help maintain and improve their health and wellbeing
2. Health and care services are built on people-centred, safe, secure and ethical digital foundations which allow staff to record, access and share relevant information across the health and care system, and feel confident in their use of digital technology, in order to improve the delivery of care
3. Health and care planners, researchers and innovators have secure access to the data they need in order to increase the efficiency of our health and care systems, and develop new and improved ways of working

Other key national strategy documents include the National Workforce Strategy for Health and Social Care in Scotland, Scotland’s Digital Health and Care Data Strategy (currently in development), and national and international sustainability strategies.

The Pursuit of Healthcare Excellence identifies three quality ambitions:

• Person centred: mutually beneficial partnerships between patients, their families, carers and those delivering healthcare services which respect individual needs and values, and which demonstrate compassion, continuity, clear communication and shared decision making
• Effective: the most appropriate treatments, interventions, support and services will be provided at the right time to everyone who will benefit, and wasteful or harmful variations will be eradicated
• Safe: There will be no avoidable injury or harm to people from the healthcare they received, and an appropriate clean and safe environment will be provided for the delivery of healthcare services at all times

The NHSGGC Corporate Objectives communicate the purpose, values, aims and corporate objectives upon which this digital strategy is built.

NHSGGC Digital operational priority is “to continue to provide resilient and secure eHealth systems for services with the necessary training and support for staff” and to “deliver the programmes within the eHealth Delivery Plan in support of the Board’s priorities”.

Key programmes include:

• Scaling up of virtual outpatient appointments and remote patient monitoring where appropriate
• Further implementation of hospital electronic prescribing and administration (HEPMA)
• Further digitisation of inpatient records
• Enabling service improvement and redesign through the use of digital tools

The eHealth Directorate has a significant role to play in supporting all NHSGGC corporate objectives. Highly relevant to our work is the corporate objective that states: “To exploit the potential for research, digital technology and innovation to reform service delivery and reduce costs”. The diagrams below show how eHealth supports and maps to the NHSGGC corporate objectives and operational priorities.