A National Digital Platform for Scotland

The National Digital Platform (NDP) is an open technology platform developed by NES (NHS Education for Scotland) in collaboration with multiple partners from across health and social care. It aims to make it simpler to deliver technology that improves the care and well-being of people in Scotland. The platform brings together cloud-based digital components and services to provide technology solutions for the public sector in Scotland. It offers a range of technology services, including an identity management service, application programming interfaces (APIs), and an application development framework.

In this episode, we find out more from Dr Paul Miller, who is the Clinical Informatics Lead at NHS Education for Scotland Technology Service, a working GP, and also the Co-chair of the openEHR Clinical Program Board. Paul has been a long-term member of the National Vision Users’ group and Primary Care Informatics / SCIMP, before working for the NES Technology Service. We discuss the changes in general practice, the concept and development of the National Digital Platform (NDP), the electronic ReSPECT application, what the migration challenges are, the need for coexistence with commercial systems, and the importance of incremental change in transforming healthcare systems. The shift toward separating data from applications and adopting digital health platforms will be a long-term, iterative process and require strong clinical leadership.

The ultimate goal is to design services around patients rather than around healthcare systems, allowing patients to access and manage their own data.

Any feedback or comments are welcome via email: andrew.mcelhinney2@nhs.scot or alex.defranco@phs.scot . Paul Miller on X/Twitter: @docpaulmiller.

National Digital Platform - The open technology platform for Scotland

Video explainer on the Digital Platform from Digifest 2022

ReSPECT and Open EHR video from Digifest 2022

The ReSPECT process

Scotland’s Digital Health and Care Strategy

SNUG Annual Conference and AGM November 2023