The Near Me video consultation platform, developed for NHS Scotland, is now being made available to third sector organisations with 45 different teams in counselling, medical and patient charities and victim support organisations making 2,300 calls last month.

The numbers were revealed in a presentation by the Scottish government’s Margaret Whoriskey at the ‘digital innovation for a digital nation’ session at ALLIANCE Scotland’s annual conference: Equally Connected: Equally Valued.

Dr Whoriskey, who is Director of Technology Enabled Care and Digital Healthcare Innovation, said the pandemic had accelerated change in the way services are delivered:

“I think the imperative around covid meant that we had much more of a mandate, more authority, to start using digital because I think too often it had been in the ‘nice to do’ box.

“We have been working on the tech programme five or six years with some really good examples of innovation and service innovation. But trying to get that scaled up and adopted was a challenge because people would say ‘we’ve always done it this way, we’re going to continue doing it this way’.”

Dr Whoriskey told her audience that the Near Me video consulting tool, which had been in place for some time before covid-19 hit, went from 300 consultations a week before the pandemic to 22,000. The government team’s business plan had set a target of achieving 3,000 by March of this year.

“Maybe we weren’t ambitious enough. We were doing this steady, staged, slow incremental growth – going with the willing and trying to facilitate others. Covid brought a complete turnaround to that.”

In a survey last year, 87% of people reached through digital and traditional market research were positive about greater use of digital platforms.

Dr Whoriskey continued: “Our challenge now is: how do we integrate some of that positive learning and opportunities? People do want to get back to a more blended way of engaging and learning.

“We have a real opportunity now, I think, to look at how digital can be that enabler to that service innovation and transformation, that can hopefully lead to those improved outcomes for our citizens of Scotland.”

The Digital Director for the Scottish government Colin Cook said the big change brought on by the pandemic is that digital inclusion is now a mainstream issue in social policy – and third sector organisations have a central part, with their local knowledge and their understanding of the people who use their services, in shaping digital health and care across Scotland:

“We have always known in digital inclusion that in order to make a long-term change you need, people need, a reason to be digital, whether that is a service that they receive, what their friends are doing, the social links they have, the networks they have.”

Mr Cook said the pandemic had shown that need for change:

”It may not have been a need that we are expecting and certainly not one that we would have wanted, but it has created the need, it has created the enthusiasm and it has sustained digital more than ever before.

“Our challenge now is to really to embed that part of practice within social care in the way that organisations operate.”

Mr Cook accepted that the cost of equipment, getting connected and data needs to be addressed to achieve digital inclusion and said he expects the Connecting Scotland programme, with its commitment to digitally connect 60,000 families, to be a long-term feature of Scotland’s digital landscape.

 

healthandcare.scot is pleased to be the media partner for the ALLIANCE’s Equally Connected: Equally Valued Conference.

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