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The Scottish Government has developed, in partnership with the NHS, the Accelerated National Innovation Adoption (ANIA) pathway and Innovation Design Authority (IDA). They provide a once for Scotland approach to the identification, assessment, and accelerated adoption of innovative technologies within the NHS. The IDA brings together key Scottish Government and NHS in Scotland decision makers to collectively agree priorities and approve high impact innovations for accelerated national adoption. ANIA harnesses the expertise and capabilities of our national Health Boards to support decision making and overcome barriers to adoption. Innovations are assessed against impact on health outcomes, patient experience, workforce, financial sustainability, and carbon reduction.

ANIA is fed by the end-to-end innovation pathway supported from the Office of the Chief Scientist (Health), and delivered in partnership with the NHS, academia, and industry. This includes translational research, our three regional NHS Innovation Hubs, Open Innovation Competitions, and innovation fellowships.

There are a range of different digital tools that already support, or have the potential to support, safer staffing and more flexible working arrangements – by its very nature the use of digital enables new ways of working. This includes, for example, the provision by Health Boards of laptops and remote login access to a number of staff, the roll-out across NHS Scotland of Microsoft Teams and the wider M365 platform that supports flexible communication and collaboration across organisational boundaries, development of decision support tools to support clinical decision making and use of patient-facing tools such as Near Me that do not require staff to remain in a fixed location. Working with the likes of NHS National Services Scotland, we continue to support the development and implementation of further tools in support of the health and social care workforce. This includes the roll out of new GP IT systems, which will better support multi-disciplinary team working in community settings, tools to support better scheduling of appointments and utilisation of theatre and workforce capacity, and rostering tools to better support strategic workforce planning.

The recently released Data Strategy for Health and Social Care sets out our intent to improve the capture, storage and use of protected characteristics data. The Scottish Government is currently exploring the range of methods to achieve the commitment made in both the Delivery Plan and Data Strategy, including the significant opportunities presented by the new CHI system that is due to be operational in autumn of this year.

The Scottish Wide Area Network has been widely used across all of the NHS and much of the rest of the public sector in Scotland since 2014. With the contract coming to an end, procurement was commenced and the contract for the ongoing delivery of SWAN was awarded to BT on 12th April 2023 for 6 years. Work is now underway to transition organisations from the incumbent supplier to the new BT-supported network from August 2023 (with planned roll out of new service still scheduled for 2026).

Yes. The Scottish Government worked collaboratively with Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and other key partners to develop new guidance for telecare on the fire legislation. This can be found here - A Partnership Approach to Fire Safety: Good Practice Guide | TEC Scotland

Initial work to capture the position of learning and development in digital skills has been undertaken. This will help inform our review of governance and the associated programme for digital capabilities across health and care.

Yes. Our National Information Governance Plan has been established in support of the Data Strategy for Health and Social Care, based on the recommendations of the Information Governance Review. The overall work includes a refresh of the Information Governance Framework.

The funding that each Scottish Government International Office has received for the last five years is as noted below.

There are no previous financial records on the table prior to 2022 for Copenhagen as this is the year it opened.

Conversion practices that try to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity are harmful, discriminatory, and have no place in our society. We are clear in our commitment to introduce legislation to end conversion practices in Scotland.

Detailed proposals for legislation are now being developed, taking careful consideration of the report of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee, the work of the Expert Advisory Group on Ending Conversion Practices, experiences from other countries and engagement with stakeholders, including those with lived experience of conversion practices.

These proposals will be published in a public consultation.

Analysis undertaken as part of the analysis underpinning the draft Energy Strategy and Just Transition Plan does not show any significant negative impacts from the closure of Hunterston B and Torness nuclear power stations on Scotland’s CO2 emissions.

Under this modelling, the reduction in electricity generation from nuclear power plants in Scotland will be compensated for by the vast expansion of low-cost renewables and flexible technologies such as storage, not by fossil fuel plants which would increase greenhouse gas emissions.