News

On October 11^th 2016, at the behest of Paul Gray, Director General for Health and Social Care, and Chair of the Innovative Healthcare Delivery Programme (IHDP) Joint Strategic Board, the IHDP hosted a day-long event at The Farr Institute in Edinburgh.

Having encountered a number of information governance challenges since its inception in 2015 the IHDP hosted the first in what is expected to be a series of iterative events to explore key issues in information governance.

In the context of Caldicott 3, this first Information Governance Summit aimed to begin a process of consensus building around the future direction for Information Governance of health and social care data utilisation and sharing in Scotland.

The event was attended by 78 delegates working in clinical, research and data contexts, including medical directors, clinicians, Directors of Public Health, information governance leads and data management leads.

Chaired by Professor Sir Lewis Ritchie, a range of speakers gave presentations on the current landscape of Information Governance. An afternoon of delegate discussions was framed by a ‘conceptual framework’ developed by the IHDP to stimulate thinking. Participant groups each explored a question posed by the IHDP and identified two key issues to take forward in the next few months.

The Report of Key Messages summarises the key issues identified by participants in response to questions posed, and brings together common themes arising in discussions.

Participants who took part in our event evaluation agreed that the Summit provided a positive atmosphere for discussion:

• ‘Very positive atmosphere and preparedness to consider some significant shifts in the way we do information governance. ‘
• ‘Good debate about the challenges ahead and what we can learn from other systems.’
• ‘A good mix of people willing to consider ambitious solutions.’
• ‘A good cross-section of views and experiences, useful.
• There appeared to be a positive and enthusiastic sense of purpose in those present to be part of the evolution of data use and data sharing across relevant bodies.‘

Next steps: The views of the Caldicott Guardians Group are to be sought on the outputs from the Summit, as a first step to developing the programme for the next information governance event. This will build on the key themes identified by delegates, and involve a wider range of participants, particularly from social care.

Read the full report here.

Download the agenda.