Structured Education and Digital Learning for Diabetes Care in Scotland

Patient education plays a major role in the successful delivery of Health and Care services in Scotland. Well delivered education allows for health and care practitioners to have meaningful and in-depth discussions with their patients, allowing for the possibility of shared decision making to take place. Simultaneously it can help patients to better understand their own conditions and more effectively manage their own health and care. The nature of the principles for adult learning coupled with the poor uptake of structured education for diabetes, suggests that the opportunity to improve the impact of structured education lies in how it is introduced and delivered to patients. The content of the various resources themselves is sound and does not require alteration, instead NHS Scotland should look towards employing innovative solutions to improve the delivery of its programmes. As well as an overhaul of the medium in which they are delivered. The market of online learning can act as a resource or a blueprint for developing new programmes. However, the patients themselves must be involved in the development process to ensure the best end product with the most benefit for the user

Review of Current Use of Digital Solutions for Mental Health

This report aims to provide a review of current usage of digital solutions for the management of mental health conditions. This includes reference to relevant Scottish Government policies and a market analysis of currently available products and services that are stated to aid the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of mental health conditions. This review has identified there are a number of digital tools, platforms or applications currently in use in health and care services across England and Scotland to support the better management of mental health. However, these were not easy to identify and there will certainly be other activity taking place in the UK that has not surfaced in this review. For those without a prior understanding or signposting to what is already available this lack of visibility would present difficulties. In particular for services and digital solutions offered outside of the NHS, citizens would find it difficult to understand what is or could be available to them and what is safe to use in supporting the management of their mental health and wellbeing

Digital Health and Care Institutes : Scottish Diabetes Policy and Market Report

In Scotland, the number of people with diabetes has steadily grown over the last 15 years. According to the Scottish Diabetes Survey the number of people with diabetes has risen from 103,835 in 2002 to approximately 298,504 people at the end of 2017, accounting for roughly 5.5% of the national population. Lanarkshire has seen a significant increase in the number of people with diabetes, the figure rising from 16,358 in 2002 to 38,671 in 2017, accounting for around 5.9% of Lanarkshire’s overall population. Within this diabetic population 88.2% have type 2 diabetes and 10.5% have type 1 diabetes [1]. It is important to note that these numbers only represent those who are registered as having diabetes, in 2015 it was estimated that a further 45,500 people in Scotland could be living with type 2 diabetes unaware of their condition in Scotland [2]. Simultaneously, approximately 500,000 people have an elevated risk of developing diabetes. This number also increases annually. Projections estimate that by 2035 over 480,000 people will be living with diabetes in Scotland, an increase of 60.8% from 2016. In 2012, 10% of Scotland’s NHS budget was being spent on diabetes, approximately £1 billion - 80% of which was being spent on treating avoidable complications. In 2007 the collective personal costs of diabetes for individual patients in Scotland was estimated to be approximately £50 million a year. This costing was based upon the combination of missed work hours, travel costs, loss of employment and early retirement due to poor health [3,4]. In 2015, diabetes was costing social services £23 million a year, as 1 in 20 diabetics required some form of assistance [5]. As mentioned above, the prevalence of diabetes in Scotland is growing and as of 2012 (see figure 1) the incidence of diabetes in Scotland overtook that of coronary heart disease. If this pattern continues, the costs, both economic and social, may become too great of a burden to bear. The purpose of this report is to lay out the current state of diabetes policy in Scotland and analyse the current and emerging digital health technology market for diabetes care. This report has been produced by the Digital Health and Care Institute. DHI is a collaboration between the Glasgow School of Art and the University of Strathclyde. This report is for informative purposes only and in no way sets out to make recommendations for further development of diabetes care provision in NHS Lanarkshire

STEM Consultation on a Strategy for Education & Training

Summary of digital skills related documen

Information Sharing for Social Care Employers

Government policy has outlined the importance and increasing need for information sharing between organisations at a local level. Everyone working in health and social care should see the use and safe sharing of information as part of their responsibility

Personalised Health and Care 2020

One of the greatest opportunities in the 20th century is the potential to safely utilise the technology revolution that has transformed society to meeting the challenges of improving health and providing better, safer care for all. At the moment, the health and care system has only started to utilise the potential of using data and technology ar a national or local level. The ambition is for a health and care system that enables patients to make healthier decisions, be more resilient, to deal more effectively with illness and disability when it arises, and have happier, longer lives in old age; a health and care system where technology can help tackle inequalities and improve access to services for the vulnerable. This paper considers what progress the health and care system has already made and what can be learnt from other industries and the wider economy, and sets out a series of proposals that will: Enable people to make the right health and care choices, citizens to have full access to their care records and access to an expanding set of NHS-accredited health and care apps and digital information services. Give care professionals and carers access to all the data, information and knowledge they need, real-time digital information on a person’s health and care 2020 for NHS-funded services, and comprehensive data on the outcomes and value of services to support improvement and sustainability Make the quality of care transparent, publish comparative information on all publicly funded health and care services, including the results of treatment and what patients and carers say Build and sustain public trust, ensure citizens are confident about sharing their data to improve care and health outcomes Bring forward life-saving treatments and support innovation and growth, make England a leading digital health economy in the world and develop new resources to support research and maximise the benefits of new medicines and treatments, particularly in light of breakthroughs in genomic science to combat long-term conditions including cancer, mental health services and tackling infectious diseases Support care professionals to make the best use of data and technology, in the future all members of the health, care and social care workforce must have the knowledge and skills to embrace the opportunities of information Assure best value for taxpayers, ensuring current and future investments in technology reduce the cost and improve the value of health services and support delivery of better health and care regardless of settin

Digital Skills for Health Professionals

The digitisation of healthcare has been on the European agenda to modernise and improve healthcare across the member states. The focus in Europe has switched from developing technology to implementing digital health and ehealth. The digital skills for health professional's (HCPs) committee has surveyed over 200 health professionals. It has discovered no change has resulted in the education of HCPs to prepare them for said implementation. The EU risks spending time and resources on strategies that will have little effect due to the lack of change

Digital Strategy : Leading the Culture Change in Health and Care

Technology and the internet are transforming society. They are changing the way we talk to each other, work with one another and organise our lives. More open access to quality data increases our understanding of how diseases develop and spread. Linking data gives us insight into the whole patient journey, not just isolated episodes of care. Advances in technology help people to do things quicker, more efficiently and with better results. Launching a health information revolution that puts patients in control of their own health and care information, and makes services convenient, accessible and efficient, is now a major priority for the Department of Health

Digital Skills for the UK Economy

The UK's digital economy is growing, 2013 saw 53% more companies form compared to 2010. It was estimated that the digital economy's gross added value was 6% of the total UK economy. The increasing rate of technological innovations requires the UK's workforce to be able to continually improve their skills to prepare them for emerging roles in their individual fields. The increasing demand for digitally skilled employees and the "move to 'Digital by Default' online government services implies directly that citizens should have, by 'default', a set of digital skills to enable them to access these services" (page 12). However, it is important to remember that the digital skills of ‘innovators’ need to be improved, and not just those of the 'user'

Doing Digital Inclusion : Health Handbook

12.6 million UK adults lack basic digital skills and 5.9 million have never used the internet before. People who do not use the internet, in comparison to those who don’t, tend to be older, poorer, and more likely to be disabled. These demographics are also at greater risk of poor health and tend to rely most heavily on the NHS. Health inequalities amount to over £5.5 billion in annual NHS healthcare costs. In 2014, 2% of the population reported digital interaction with the NHS Despite 98% of GP’s in England offer online booking 51% NHS Choices users are more confident in dealing with healthcare professionals, with 27% of users making fewer visits to their GP because of visiting the site