Scottish National Users' Group (SNUG) Podcast

The way we deliver health care has been radically changed by the Covid 19 pandemic. In an almost Darwinian way, general practices have evolved their systems to try and meet the various challenges, much of it driven by technology and the ability to communicate and provide services by telephone or online. Many practices now have what’s been called a digital front door. The question is, how widely to...

In the 1970s and 80s the UK Government produced a series of film and leaflets intended to advise the public on how to protect themselves during a nuclear attack, called “Protect and survive”. In the wake of a recent massive cyberattack on the Irish health Service , which has paralysed their core health services, we remember the Wannacry attack on the NHS in 2017 , consider how we have had to addre...

In the week of an important Scottish Parliament election, we spoke to @DrChrisWilliams who is the co-chair of RCGP Scotland . Chris is a GP in Highland, with a special interest in IT and he discussed some of the consequences of the pandemic, as well as the current challenges facing general practice in Scotland. RCGP Scotland has developed its own manifesto, which was discussed by the parties at a...

As Scottish GPs are starting to form cohorts within Health Boards, to prepare for selection of one of the next generation of GP IT systems, it will be essential to understand how each system delivers the requirements to become accredited and approved for use in Scotland Dr Beena Rashkes and Dr Andrew McElhinney of SNUG were joined by Shona Wares, Head of Product Management, and Margaret McCaul, Na...

Professor Sir Lewis Ritchie has made an enormous contribution to both healthcare and technology in Scotland, over the past 40 years. He has been a GP partner in Peterhead, is still the James McKenzie Professor of General Practice at Aberdeen University, and he has also been Director of Public Health at NHS Grampian. https://www.abdn.ac.uk/iahs/research/profiles/l.d.ritchie He has played a unique r...

In this episode, we discuss the options for recording Covid-19 vaccination data in Scotland. Options for GPs are to use templates or guidelines provided by your GP IT system (EMIS or Vision), or to use the TURAS Vaccine Management Tool. Janet Binnie is an eHealth facilitator in NHS Forth Valley, and a member of the Change Advisory Board. Dr Ian Thompson @ianmthompson is a GP in East Lothian and is...

After a year which has left a lot of us searching vainly for a time travelling De Lorean, it’s time for some Christmas cheer, with a cocktail of reflection, positivity, and ideas for how we can look after each other, also develop to our full potential and look forward to a better future. We are joined for this episode by Dr Chris Weatherburn , the acting chair of Scottish Clinical Information Mana...

This episode features a review of SNUG's first virtual conference, which covered a wide range of current GP IT topics, in three plenaries and twenty workshops held via Microsoft Teams on November 10th. We feature some of the highlights, including some snippets from a talk by Dr Chris Weatherburn on data quality, a workshop by the national team on the Office 365, Teams and NHS Mail roll out, and so...

This month, we are talking to ourselves! Dr Neil Kelly @NeilGKelly reflects on his impressively long stint as chairman of SNUG, and the influence SNUG can have, and has had on strategy and providing support for GP IT users. He considers, as we head into an uncertain winter, how technology can best help us deliver health care and the need for us all to look after ourselves and each other. We have a...

A main aim of the 2018 GMS Contract was to make GP workload more sustainable and this has resulted in the addition of many Health Board employed staff to work in general practice teams - pharmacists, ANPs, physiotherapists, phlebotomists and mental health nurses. National standards have been set for the IT hardware and systems available within general practices in Scotland. Dr Andrew Cowie @DrAndr...

NHS Scotland developed SCI Gateway in the early 2000s to allow secure communication of clinical data and enable GPs to make protocol-based referrals from Primary to Secondary Care. Over the years it has been used for many thousands of GP referrals, and also a much wider range of purposes including the requesting of advice from specialists, death certifications, infection notifications, and tertiar...

As we continue to develop new ways of working in Scottish general practice, face to face consultations are no longer the norm. Many practices are making much greater use of telephone and video consultations and good triage systems are essential to help patients use services most effectively. eConsult ( @econsult_thinks ) from WebGP is a platform which provides new and easier ways for patients to g...

This month, we have a special edition of our podcast, starting to look at online resources for Clinical Decision Support, this time featuring a wide-ranging conversation with @medmyths James McCormack, Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of British Columbia. We discuss why shared decision making about starting treatments is a vital part of Evidence Based Medicine, where many gui...

Graham Gault is the eHealth Lead for Dumfries and Galloway and he was involved in the Scottish Government deal with Microsoft to purchase Office 365 for the NHS. He speaks to Dr Neil Kelly of the Scottish National (GPIT) Users Group (SNUG ) about how he expects #office365 and @MicrosoftTeams to start to transform the way the NHS works, providing new opportunities for flexible and collaborative wor...

The Covid-19 pandemic has changed the world - and Scottish general practice. Many practices are using technology in new ways, and existing innovations have been accelerated - Dr Andrew McElhinney talks to Dr David Cooper @davidcooper1975  from Old Machar Practice in Aberdeen about using eConsult ( http://www.oldmachar.co.uk/econsult.html )  and to Karen Hotopp @KarenHotopp of   @NHSForthValley abo...

Dr Jim Campbell  is the Clinical Advisor to the @NHSNSS National GP IT Re- Provisioning Team @GPITScotland . He has been a key influencer in GP IT for nearly 40 years and describes his journey through the world of IT as a GP in Irvine, and GP IT advisor in Ayrshire, and also his roles with the GPASS Users Group, SNUG, and now NSS and GP IT Re-provisioning, with Dr Neil Kelly @NeilGKelly ) of SNUG....

A recent series of workshops called "Transforming the Primary Care Prescribing / Dispensing Pathway" was jointly sponsored by the Pharmacy and Medicines Division and Primary Care Division of the Scottish Government. We discussed some of the matters arising from these workshops and some potential  solutions for Primary Care prescribing with Dr Scott Jamieson (@DocScott82 ) of the RCGP and Tony McDa...

When you or your relatives are ill or in need of care don't you want the people looking after you to have the right information to look after you properly? Sharing the right information securely and at the right time with all providers of health and social care is both extremely important and also suprisingly difficult to achieve. Dr Lucy Munro ( @DrLucyMM ) is a GP and  the Associate Medical Dire...

Dr Keith Moffat is a GP in Ayrshire and is a GP Clinical lead for NSS (National Services Scotland)  within the ISD (Information and Services Division) Primary Care programme  with NSS. This includes SPIRE (Scottish Primary Care Information Resource) which is a data extraction service for Scottish general practices. He is involved in planning and prioritising which reports will be developed and mad...

ReSPECT is a process that creates personalised recommendations for a person’s clinical care in a future emergency in which they are unable to make or express choices. It was introduced in Forth Valley in 2017 and we speak to Dr Lynsey Fielden of Forth Valley Royal Hospital to find out more about what these conversations with patients may involve,  some of the different settings they can take place...

In an interview with SNUG co-chairman Dr Neil Kelly, Louise McTaggart describes her experiences working with general practices in the West of Scotland over a number of years.  Louise started off as a practice manager in Glasgow in the 1990s and after working for a time as a trainer and IT facilitator for practices in Glasgow, she is now the National GP IT Re-deployment manager for the National Ser...

How will technologies like video consultations, artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual reality (VR) change the ways healthcare is delivered in the future? This episode features a conversation between Dr Andrew McElhinney, a GP and member of SNUG, with Dr Keith Grimes, who is also a GP and is currently the Clinical Innovation Director for Babylon Health ( www.babylonhealth.com ). Keith discusses...

The re-procurement, renewal and modernisation of existing GP clinical systems in Scotland to the next generation of centrally hosted systems is called GP IT re-provisioning. The three suppliers who are on the Framework Contract Agreement are Vision, EMIS and Microtest, and they are currently developing their systems so they can be tested and validated against the Scottish specification and require...

This new series of podcasts is going to look at how technology supports health care in Scotland, and SNUG - the Scottish National Users group ( https://www.snughealth.org.uk ) - exists to try and ensure that people get the best healthcare through the best use of technology. SNUG is a group of people who are involved in the delivery of health care through GP practices in Scotland. The SNUG Members'...