Scottish National Users' Group (SNUG) Podcast

In this episode, we feature a discussion with Dr. Bob Lunan, a GP from Marnock Medical Group in Kilmarnock, Ayrshire. Bob shares his journey in managing a growing patient population, expanding from 12,500 to over 18,000 patients. He discusses the challenges and successes of integrating new practices, especially during the pandemic. Bob provides insights into the implementation and evolution of the...

In this episode, we meet Emma Lynas and Dr Satya Raghuvanshi, to discuss how Accurx has evolved from a clinical decision support tool for antibiotic prescribing into a comprehensive communication platform for healthcare professionals and patients, facilitating various communication needs, such as sending SMS messages, conducting remote consultations, and managing patient enquiries. It is in 98% pr...

Welcome to 2024! Dr David Cooper, @davidcooper1975 ,  co-chair of SNUG and GP in Old Machar Practice in Aberdeen, discusses the progress of GPIT Re-provisioning, challenges faced, especially by EMIS practices, and the broader landscape which includes a number of upcoming projects and technological advancements expected over the next 12 months.  David hopes for efficiency savings through smarter us...

Could video consultations have the potential to be a game changer in medical education? In this SNUG podcast interview, Dr. Richard Darnton @DrDarnton discusses his role in running the GP part of the Medical course at the University of Cambridge , and his role as director of the  GP Education Group (GPEG) , focusing on the emphasis on hands-on experience for medical students in general practice. H...

GPs in England and Scotland are trying to do a broadly similar job - they both work within the NHS, yet they have different contracts, different organisational and digital infrastructures and different GP clinical systems. They both face similar challenges in terms of workload, prescribing, sustainability and increased demand. Additional team members like pharmacists, physiotherapists, mental heal...

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 soluti...

We are delighted to welcome Professor Bob Wachter in this episode of the SNUG podcast. He  is Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), a highly influential voice in the worlds of medicine and Health IT, renowned for his book " The Digital Doctor "and the 2016 Wachter Report on NHS digitalization . He joins us to discuss a wide range o...

In this episode, we return to the world of Digital Asynchronous Consulting Systems (DACS) and ponder how digital changes might be implemented in general practice during a time of chaos for the NHS, as it has its 75th Anniversary. We get a fake 5-year old’s opinion on DACS systems, before hearing from Michael Wong and Sandeep Singh from Engage Health Systems, who have developed a system called Enga...

In this episode, we delve into the fascinating world of some of the new AI tools and their impact on healthcare and innovation. We explore the advancements in large language models like ChatGPT and the potential they hold for transforming the way we access medical information and provide care. We discuss the experiences of Dr Keith Grimes, an expert in digital health and innovation, as he shares h...

High risk medicines are defined as medicines that have a high risk of causing injury or harm if they are misused or used in error. Error rates with these medications are not necessarily higher than with any other medicines, but when problems occur, the consequences can be more significant. A number of high risk prescribing safety indicators have been identified. We talk to Dr Ann Wales, @Ann_Wales...

How can we best measure the activity in general practice and measure how busy we really are? The In-Hours GP Activity project is a collaboration between National Services Scotland (NSS), Public Health Scotland (PHS) and the Scottish Government to access, understand and improve the availability and consistency of activity data from in-hours general practice. A pilot was held during the autumn of 20...

Our recent SNUG annual conference on the 30th November, was held face to face for the first time in over 3 years, at the Westerwood hotel in Cumbernauld. In this episode we get a taste of the atmosphere at the conference and say hello to some of the attendees. The main focus for many people was the forthcoming GP system change, with every practice now planning a move to Vision over the couple of y...

And then there was one…. EMIS Health shared the disappointing news this week that they are unable to meet the timelines of the Scottish Framework for GP IT Re-provisioning, and as a result, have made the decision to withdraw. This will leave Vision as the only accredited GP system for Scotland. A Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) document regarding EMIS’ exit from the Framework has been created and...

Docman is an electronic document management system and is used by general practices across Scotland. It was integral in the move to paper light practice and provides a workflow functionality, as well as rapid transfer of discharge and clinic letters and results from hospitals via the Docman hub and electronic document transfer (EDT). Using electronic document interchange between practices, the GP2...

Scotland’s Digital health and care strategy was published in October 2021: https://www.gov.scot/publications/scotlands-digital-health-care-strategy/ What are we going to do with citizens data, with the management information that is collected, how do we address the challenges of devices and new sources of data that are coming in, how do we build trust? In this episode, we hear highlights from a pl...

Professor George Crooks is the Chief Executive Officer of the Digital Health & Care Innovation Centre. He was a GP in Aberdeen for many years and understands the challenges facing Primary Care, as we move forward in a Digital age. At the recent SNUG Members’ day, he gave a plenary entitled: “Back to the Future! How can we use next generation digital solutions to deliver safe effective and sustaina...

Dr Jamie Hartmann-Boyce is associate professor at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, and her team published  a paper at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic predicting how care for patients with conditions like diabetes might worsen during national emergencies like the Covid pandemic.  She also had a paper in Diabetes care looking at the evidence that patients with diabetes wer...

The Practitioner Services Division of National Services Scotland (NSS) supports GP practices across Scotland in a number of important ways. In this episode, we speak to their Business Change manager Annie McDonnell ( annie.mcdonnell2@nhs.scot ) who describes a project to digitize new patient records coming into practices who have already backscanned their old patient records. We discussed how may...

We have another episode looking at the care of patients with long term conditions, today we are joined by Dr Lorenz Kemper of Medlink Solutions . This is a system for carrying out online clinical reviews and can be used for reviews of conditions like asthma and diabetes, as well as a variety of other uses like medications reviews, submitting blood pressure readings, or reviews of patients on HRT o...

Scotland’s House of Care is based on the Year of Care Programme and as this BMJ article explains, is all about delivering person centred care in long term conditions. In this episode of our podcast, we discuss how we can offer Care and Support Planning to patients with long term conditions, as we speak to Dr Graham Kramer @KramerGraham and Lindsay Oliver @lindsayeoliver , two of the leading figure...

Dr Bill Martin is a former co-chair of SNUG and has recently moved on after a long spell in general practice, during which he experienced progressive computerization of all aspects of general practice. We discussed why he still thinks general practice is a great career choice, why he thinks many of the changes which have happened during the pandemic will stick, and why we will have to be careful a...

Dr Rob Hamilton is a GP in Snug Medical Centre in Snug, a small town on the South coast of Tasmania. We say hello to Rob and hear a little about what life there is like at the moment, as the border with new South Wales is about to open and they may start to experience Covid-19 for the first time. We also reflect on a hectic 2021 with SNUG co-chair Dr Neil Kelly who gives us some ideas for new year...

Would you trust a machine to diagnose your skin cancer? Or, maybe, to reassure you that a mole is “ok”? We take a dive into the world of machine learning, which is a branch of artificial intelligence based on the idea that systems can learn from data, identify patterns and make decisions with minimal human intervention. The most promising advances in medical image analysis have used a type of algo...

The Scottish Digital Prescribing and Dispensing Programme , is being led by Ewan Morrison , Director of Pharmacy, NSS and Dr Sam Patel , consultant physician in Respiratory and General Medicine NHS Lanarkshire, and eHealth Clinical Lead for NES Digital Services. This programme is a major national collaboration between  NHS Education for Scotland and NHS National Services Scotland, and aims to revo...

One of the big areas of interest at the SNUG members’ day in May was the increasing use of digital systems for communicating and consulting “asynchronously” and how these are changing the face of general practice. In this episode, we have highlights from two of the talks discussing issues around online consulting. Thomas Dodd is a training partner for AskmyGP and he discussed some of the popular m...