What is NDP?

Overview

In the future, the first point of contact with health and care services will be digital. This will need systems that enable different elements to communicate easily to share patients’ information.

To deliver this, in 2018 the Scottish Government commissioned NHS Education for Scotland (NES) to develop the National Digital Platform (NDP). The goal was to help health and care systems in Scotland communicate between them and support their innovation.

In 2021, the Scottish Government and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) published their Digital Health & Care Strategy.

This Digital Health & Care Strategy outlined three priorities:

1. People have digital access to information, their own data and services that support their health and wellbeing, wherever they are.
2. Digital options are increasingly available as a choice for people accessing services and staff delivering them.
3. The infrastructure, systems, regulation, standards and governance are in place to ensure robust and secure delivery.

The National Digital Platform

NDP provides a set of technical capabilities that support these three priorities, allowing health and care users in Scotland to benefit from a more joined-up digital experience. Some benefits of this will be:

• health and care professionals can easily access the most accurate and up-to-date patients’ data
• users have access to their personal data while receiving the best care
• health and care services use their technology budget in a more tailored way

NDP currently support a wide range of digital products within NHS Scotland. To know more about NDP, visit Our Approach page.