On Wednesday 21st June, the annual Holyrood Connect ICT Awards took place at the Waldorf Astoria in Edinburgh. The awards celebrate excellence in public sector ICT, aiming to recognise the achievements of Scotland’s leading public sector practitioners and teams and their work in developing innovative and creative solutions to public service challenges through the use of technology that is bringing real benefits to Scotland’s citizens.
The Data Lab, Scottish Government and NHS/NSS, were nominated for the Connect Data Insight Award for our joint delayed discharge project, and we are delighted to have taken the award home! This is another confirmation of what collaboration can achieve towards innovative solutions using data science.
At present around 1,200 patients are delayed from leaving hospital each month, so Scottish Government and NHS/NSS worked with The Data Lab to perform a proof of concept analysis that results in an assessment of the risk of delay when a patient presents at hospital. In using real patient data from health and Social Care, this challenging project has the potential to make a real difference to how the healthcare system identifies and manages the risk of a patient becoming a delayed discharge from hospital. Colleagues have worked enthusiastically and effectively to resolve data access issues, to quality assure data and to produce a successful algorithm. The project is now well placed to move to the next phase.
Congratulations to everyone involved in the project, and to the other Connect Awards winners and nominees. We saw some great examples of excellent projects, and it is great to see all the positive work and impact being achieved in Scotland.