Home > News & Events > Karen Stewart Healthcare Science Officer, Scottish Government – February VOX Statement

Karen Stewart Healthcare Science Officer, Scottish Government – February VOX Statement

January came and went quickly and it feels quite a while since Scotland celebrated the start of 2018 with many a cultural legacy of ancient customs and traditions, such as a couple of verses of ‘Auld Lang Syne’. January gave me the opportunity to plan and look forward to another year, especially a year in Healthcare Science.

To highlight a couple of exciting things happening in 2018, one is marking the 70th Anniversary of the NHS, a time to celebrate and thank our workforce for its worthy contribution to service and the people of Scotland. Also 2018 marks Scotland’s Year of Young People and we have been asked to think about how the models of service delivery that we are planning will enable a sustainable, viable future for health and social care going forward. 

Throughout this year I will be looking forward to seeing NHSScotland’s Realistic medicine agenda being translated into a focused  quality, safety and value driven healthcare system, to ensure that all treatment offered to patients adds value.  The Scottish Health & Social Care Delivery Plan says we must get better value out of medicine and medical interventions and find ways to reduce any unnecessary cost, waste and variation in clinical practice. Our Scientific community strive to embed demand optimisation strategies into service delivery, and the development of ‘Atlas’s of Variation’ within NHSScotland, will enable the delivery of ‘the right test, at the right time, for the right patient’.

It is an exciting time for healthcare scientists within Scotland, work continues within our Shared Services portfolios looking at Laboratory service distribution and innovation and technological improvements are embedded into the Clinical Engineering /Medical Physics shared services agenda. While our Diagnostic Networks continue to develop and contribute to our overall service delivery. I’m very much looking forward to seeing how all these significant change programmes develop this year.

So a huge thanks to our scientific community for all your hard work and enthusiasm.

Karen Stewart

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