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Fireside Chat: NHS Scotland

National Data Service

I’ve worked in NHS National Services Scotland (NHSS) for around 2 years as Chief Data Officer having spent 15 years in Scottish Government, most recently as Chief Data Officer, where I lead the development of Scotland’s first AI Strategy.  I studied AI as my degree back in the late 90s, so it has been really exciting to see the potential we saw back then become a reality over the last few years!  It was whilst studying that I encountered open source – working with linux was just such an eye opener – it made it possible for me to do so much more, learn and contribute.  

NSS is a national health board with around 3,500 people providing a range of vital services, like national screening oversight, procurement and logistics and the national blood transfusion service.  We also provide national digital and data services and have a portfolio of capabilities we deploy to help our customers to achieve their outcomes.

Scotland’s Data Strategy for Health and Social Care

Scotland published its first data strategy for health and social care in February 2023, aiming to put people at the heart of it – whether that’s about how we empower citizens to access their data, or about how we empower the workforce to use data. There’s a strong message about democratising data and insight as an enabler of innovation to unlock better outcomes. That could be evaluating the impact of new medicines on real world populations, enabling professionals to provide more personalised care or using AI to support professionals interpreting complex data to make better diagnostic decisions. We know that data can help to save time, optimise use of resources and improve lives.

NSS Role in the Data Strategy

We’re playing our part in achieving those ambitions by leading and contributing to a number of deliverables in that  National data strategy.  For example, building the national service for data and analytics,making more data available across the system, for example through the primary care data and intelligence platform. We’re working to democratise data and analytics by developing better ways to share information on the data we hold and how to access it.  A really great feature of the strategy is that NHSS is doing these things in partnership with other organisations, working really closely with organisations like Public Health Scotland, NHS Boards and NES as well as the Scottish Government. 

I lead our data pillar and we provide the core capability to integrate, organise, manage and create insight from data across health and care.  Our team of 70 professionals bring data engineering, architecture, analysis, and software development expertise working as a hybrid team from home and locations in Edinburgh and Glasgow.  

Our data analytics platform – Seer – is a national asset, part of the national digital platform and a core part of how we deliver our mission as the National Data Service for Health and Care in Scotland.  We bring a powerful combination of innovation and expertise in data and AI, an unrivalled mix of national data assets and of course great technology.  

Today Seer supports more than 20,000 users across the health and social care economy in Scotland, spanning health boards, government, local government and academia with over 100 data products, 100s of thousands of reports, dashboards and visualisations as well as advanced analytics, spanning clinical data like vaccinations and non-clinical data.Open source software is a really important part of how we achieve our mission, enabling us to drive innovation and deliver solutions rapidly.  

Skills

Data and AI skills are in really high demand, and we’re operating in a really competitive environment.  That can bring challenges, but we’re tackling it positively by investing in the skills of our people, engaging with initiatives to give opportunities early in careers and selling the benefits of working in an organisation where you use the leading edge technology to solve complex and challenging problems that make a real difference to the lives of the people of Scotland. 

Benefits of AI

I see a huge opportunity for AI in health that goes beyond the clinical use cases with huge opportunities in automation & administration, enabling clinicians to automate the time consuming processes associated with documenting and recording, generating communications and clinical coding and reporting.  In Knowledge & Intelligence there are examples of how we can use AI to enable better decision making.   And in clinical use cases, such as radiology,  AI is used to improve both efficiency and accuracy such as in Aberdeen where there is excellent work on breast cancer screening.  Our ability to deploy and manage models through their lifecycle at national scale presents a great opportunity for NHS Scotland to scale up the benefits of AI. 

Challenges of AI

There is huge excitement around AI but there needs to be a measure of realism too!  A big challenge for people like me is maintaining energy and support as we move through the process.  An important part of that is learning lessons from previous waves of digital adoption to make sure that the ways we adopt AI, really unlock benefits in how we operate, enhance the capability of our workforce and ensure these benefits reach everyone in society, and that people are not marginalised.  That will require continued attention to openness and accountability – it was great to see Scottish Government announce the Scottish AI Register. 

Horizons

There is much to get excited about in data and AI at the moment, and we have embarked on developing a Vision for Public Sector Data in Scotland with Scottish Government – a really ambitious piece of work to challenge ourselves on a long term vision for data – not just over the next 5 years but over a long term horizon up to 20 years.  Thinking about how public sector data can enable growth in jobs and skills; improve the lines and wellbeing of people in Scotland ethically and inclusively and the future of our public services.

With such an ambitious agenda that’s not something that the government can do on its own and it’s not an agenda which is owned by data and digital people.  We’re taking a learning approach to exploring ambitious ideas and bringing together a diverse group of people from public services, academia, private and third sector.  This group is people-centred, collaborative, transparent in their way of working and open to receiving and responding to feedback and is committed to co-creating a vision for data which is both compelling and distinctively Scottish. 

So far we’ve had two facilitated workshops which have stretched and challenged us to think beyond our normal horizons.  For me, it has been fantastic to see how positively people have engaged with this conversation and how excited people are about the future we can unlock, and the role data can play and I’m delighted that OpenUK is part of that conversation.

First published by OpenUK in 2024 as part of State of Open: The UK in 2024 Phase Two “The Open Manifesto”

© OpenUK 2024

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