NHS Scotland is planning to expand the use of its Seer data and analytics platform.
The Scottish Government has announced the move, saying the platform will now be named Seer 2 and will improve collaboration between the country’s health boards and support social care.
Seer enables staff to access and analyse data to support decision making in patient care and allocating resources. Areas in which it is currently used include cancer intelligence, monitoring blood stocks and the flu vaccination programme.
The new version will provide access to new cloud based tools and technologies, including machine learning and AI.
A Scottish Government spokesperson said: “In the short term, we have focused on deploying technologies that support collaboration and enhance capacity, for example information dashboards supporting the Scottish Government’s winter planning, and new analytical tools such as PowerBI, R Shiny as well as new infrastructure such as elastic Kubernetes clusters and federated authentication.
“Looking forward, additional analytical tools will include machine learning and AI, and we are reviewing what technologies we can use to further enhance capability.”
Improvements and reform
Health Secretary Neil Gray said: “Better use of data and digital technology is critical to how we drive improvements in healthcare and is a key part of our plans to reform services.
“Through enhancing our use of technology, we can unlock opportunities for collaboration across health boards and other organisations, and it is therefore vital that this includes maximisation of digital and far better, and far faster, use of data.
“It’s great to see how world leading Seer 2 is enabling us to support collaboration and innovation across government and the NHS, providing near real time intelligence to support decision making, build new insights and enable better outcomes.
“This platform is just one of the ways we are embracing tech to help us as we face challenges ahead in funding pressures, inequalities and workforce.”
Seer 2 is support by digital and data leads in NHS National Services Scotland and the Scottish Government and is a core element of the country’s health and social care data strategy.
