Introduction

Across the globe, healthcare and social care systems are adapting to meet the challenges brought by changing populations, funding priorities and the continuously evolving scope of benefits expected of them.

Among the Digital Maturity Assessment’s stakeholders, understanding organisational digital maturity as a catalyst for effective and efficient health and social care in Scotland has resulted in cultural change that supports their organisations’ digital future, but also provided practical approaches that facilitate their journey towards digital maturity.

Since our last report in December 2023, organisations have used the Scottish Government/COSLA Digital Maturity Assessment to develop their digital strategies, identify priorities for digitisation, and track the outcomes of past transformation efforts.

At a central government level, insights from the Assessment have contributed to policy development & action planning in Digital Health and Care, informed debate & decision-making at national and local levels and supported responses to Parliamentary Questions.

The recent updates to organisations’ submissions reported on in this document will broaden the Digital Maturity Assessment’s range of use cases even further; for the first time, stakeholders will be able to gain insights into organisations’ speed and direction of travel relative to a baseline on their journey towards digital maturity.

Overall, more than 600 participants from 31 organisations collaborated on the submissions for the 2024 assessment update. Additionally, more than 7,000 general staff from over 20 organisations completed the staff survey.

Summary

The state of digital maturity across the Scottish healthcare and social care landscape has become less homogenous and more disparate since 2023, and a lower share of the population is served by organisations that lead the field.

That said, overall digital maturity within Scottish healthcare and social care has improved at a steady pace since 2023, driven in part by the digital transformation work of a share of organisations assessed, particularly in the field of ePrescribing, digital records and digital channels. Further, 2024 results suggest that other core Capability areas such as Business and Clinical Intelligence, Standards and Orders & Results Management may be among the next priorities for participating healthcare and social care organisations.

Encouragingly, in some Readiness areas – Information Governance in particular – 2024 results suggest a generally high level of digital maturity nationally. Benefits from maturing processes, policies and controls in this area should ultimately result in less unnecessary constraints on operations across health care and social care in Scotland and thereby contribute to a more positive perception of Information Governance than has been popular in recent years.

Factors such as digital skills and confidence among both the workforce and citizens generally, along with the effectiveness of skills development initiatives continues to challenge organisation’s ability to fully realise the benefits from their digital transformation efforts. That said, staff working within healthcare and social care continue to support digital ways of working; moreover, 2024 results suggest that the use of digital channels by citizens using services has increased by around 15% since 2023.

The delivery of effective digital channels that citizens can use to find and interact with healthcare and social care services is constrained by ongoing challenges around the digital dimensions of integrating care: While organisations tend to gauge themselves as mature in terms strategy, policy and leadership, progress on digitally integrating Capability processes such as providing unified digital channels across local healthcare and social care services has remained limited.

Next page