The Strategy contains a foreword by the Cabinet Secretary for Health, Wellbeing and Cities Strategy, and sets out the Scottish Government's vision for eHealth in 2017. The strategy is ambitious; it has the citizen at its centre; and seeks to build on the significant progress that was made collectively over the course of the last three years.

Five new strategic eHealth aims have been developed and these will be the focus of all eHealth activity over the next six years. They are to use information and technology in a coordinated way to:

• maximise efficient working practices, minimise wasteful variation, bring about measurable savings and ensure value for money;
• support people to communicate with the NHSScotland, manage their own health and wellbeing, and to become more active participants in the care and services they receive (Citizen eHealth);
• contribute to care integration and to support people with long term conditions;
• improve the availability of appropriate information for healthcare workers and the tools to use, and communicate that information effectively to improve quality; and
• improve the safety of people taking medicines and their effective use.

Rather than focusing on products and technology, the new Strategy concentrates on the benefits and outcomes experienced by both citizens and healthcare workers flowing from eHealth enabled service re-design, with 9 Scottish Spending Review 2011 deliverables to be achieved across NHSScotland by 2014.

Background information

The National Health Service in Scotland (NHSScotland) has around 132 000 staff, including more than 63 000 nurses, midwives and health visitors and over 8 500 doctors. There are also more than 7 000 practitioners, including GPs, dentists, opticians and community pharmacists who work as independent contractors. They perform a range of NHS services which are, with the exception of NHS dentistry, free at the point of delivery.

The Scottish Government Health Directorate (SGHD) is responsible both for NHSScotland and for the development and implementation of health and social care policy. The Chief Executive of NHSScotland leads the central management of the NHS, is accountable to ministers for the efficiency and performance of the service, and heads the Health Directorate which oversees the work of the 14 regional NHS Boards responsible for the planning and delivery of health services for people in their area.

Further information:

• Original news article - eHealth Programme - Scottish Government  
• The second eHealth Strategy for NHSScotland  
• eHealth Programme Scotland  
• Scotland's Health on the Web - NHSScotland