This year’s DigiFest Scotland event in December comes at the time of an exciting development in Scotland’s health and social care landscape.
The first version of the Digital Front Door – an online service called MyCare.scot – will launch at the time of the conference.
This represents a major change in the way that people in Scotland will receive healthcare and social care support, widening access and championing inclusion. It will transform how we interact with services, empowering people with more choice in how, when and where they access health and social care information.
Beginning with dermatology outpatients in Lanarkshire, the MyCare.scot service will expand and develop, informed by our experience and feedback from users. In line with good practice, we will adopt an incremental approach to ensure that the service is robust, secure, and meets the needs of those who use it.
We take privacy very seriously and personal information will be protected by the same safeguards that exist for health and social care information. We are committed to collecting, processing, storing and sharing your data safely and securely. User feedback is critical to everything we are doing and that’s why we are taking an iterative approach.
Following the launch of the initial service in Lanarkshire, we will be engaging with service users and stakeholders to improve and shape MyCare.scot. We want to make sure that MyCare.scot works as it should and offers services that meet local needs as well as addressing national priorities, such as waiting lists.
Collaboration is key as we want everyone to share learning and user feedback quickly and consistently – we need to know what works and what doesn’t to ensure that this new service works for everyone who uses it. We recognise that people are eager to use the new service, and we are committed to rolling it out only when we are confident it meets people’s needs and offers helpful functionality which is reliable and easy to use.
We have also been working closely with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) as the plans have been developed. Importantly, we have a longstanding commitment to ensure that people who wish to use digital services are supported to do so, and that no-one is left behind.
We have consistently drawn upon people’s lived experience in our initial development phase and this will continue throughout delivery. We are very mindful of digital inclusion and will continue to ensure that choice remains key in how people access MyCare. scot.
As part of our commitment to making MyCare.scot available to all, we will be opening up access to an initial version of MyCare.scot from April for everyone over the age of 18. This will be in readiness for more services and functionality to be added as they become available across Scotland.
Initially, people will be able to log in through a secure ScotAccount identity, see some personal information, and have access to the national service finder available from NHS Inform.
As the platform develops, we will add more services and information over time. MyCare.scot has been fully designed to encompass social work and social care as well as health services, and could potentially link to wider public services in the future.
The first version of the MyCare.scot app will launch in Lanarkshire in December 2025, with a full rollout across Scotland starting from April 2026, with further information about projected timescales and how to get ready available here.
We are really looking forward to working together in this shared national endeavour that will transform our experience as patients and service users and make sure we make the absolute best of our health and care services for everyone in Scotland.
