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Further pathways for prostate cancer, asthma, heart failure and pulmonary disease are in development. A National Procurement exercise, concluded in September 2021, resulted in a 5-year contract awarded to Inhealthcare Ltd (IHC) for a national asynchronous communication platform. The purpose of this contract is to enable a significant expansion of remote health pathways within Board areas and to support the provision of equitable access to these services for all NHS Boards.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-18497 on 15 June 2023. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

The Community Health Index (CHI) has been in place since the 1970s. We are in the process of modernising and upgrading the system that runs the CHI, which acts as the master patient index for the whole of the NHS. As such, the new CHI system requires careful implementation to safely and seamlessly join up hundreds of data flows. It is now in limited use for some elements of health data. The new system is expected to be fully operational in Autumn 2023.

The CivTech challenge on ethical and explainable AI has directly lead to the recent launch of the Scottish AI Register.

The AI Register, developed in collaboration with Finnish start-up Saidot, as part of the challenge was launched in March 2023. It makes transparent the development and use of AI in the public sector, and offers the public a simple and effective platform to have a say in how AI is used to make decisions and deliver public services.

The Security of Network and Information Systems Regulations audit lifecycle continues to assess health boards on a yearly basis against the Public Sector Cyber Resilience framework

Working with the NHS Scotland Cyber Centre of Excellence, the Scottish Health Competent Authority are continuing to support boards in addressing any findings and gaps in their application of the NIS Regulations to mitigate the cyber threat.

This includes improvements around centralised security, monitoring, threat hunting, incident response and training & awareness. We are therefore better enabled in the achievement of security compliance across NHS Scotland, protecting people’s data and improving the resilience of critical services for patient care.

The M365 Cross-Organisation Collaboration Programme has been established to maximise collaboration and communication opportunities available to organisations across Health and Social Care. The ability of organisations to safely and easily share information through the M365 platform will provide multiple benefits to citizens and ease pressures on our service delivery systems.

Working in partnership with the Local Government Digital Office, work is underway with staff in participating Local Authorities & Health Boards and further planning is in progress to enable wider data sharing.

We have implemented the ability to share the Scottish Ambulance Service (SAS) electronic patient record (ePR) with General Practice. All Health Boards (with the exception of NHS Shetland) now have this in place.

Ongoing monitoring of implementation and engagement with NHS Shetland is underway to identify actions required to progress. This work is now being incorporated into the Urgent and Unscheduled Care collaborative programme.

Please see answer to question SW-18813 on 20 June 2023 for how we support innovation through demand led challenges.

We established the Digital Mental Health Programme in 2020 to respond to the increased demand for mental health services by integrating and maximising use of digital, increasing existing service capacity and resilience within each health board.

We continue to work with Digital Health and Care Innovation Centre (DHI) to host the digital mental health innovation cluster and identify opportunities for reinforcing a robust mental health infrastructure. Since its launch in March 2022 the cluster has recruited 950 members from across clinical, academic and industrial stakeholders and promotes innovation through the development of collaboration facilitated through a number of clusters events the latest focused on three key areas: prevention, greater access to services and support for mental health services staff.

The Inventory Management System (IMS) was successfully rolled out to all Health Boards at the end of March 2023. Further work is underway with the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service and Scottish Ambulance Service to identify potential areas of benefit for local IMS stores. In addition to this, Data and Analytics workshops have been held with 8 Boards to demonstrate further improvements at a local level as a result of the IMS implementation.

The Right Decision Service is now in the process of being transitioned from an innovation development, run by our partners in the Digital Health and Care Innovation Centre, to a national service run by the NHS. This will see the establishment of this national decision support service by the end of summer 2023.