Scots’ Dallas project fails to recruit

A £10 million digital health project in Scotland has recruited just one quarter of expected users.

Living it Up is an online self-management hub, which “provides tailored advice on improving and managing health, care and wellbeing”.

Aimed at the over 50s age group, the project started in June 2012. The plan was to have 55,000 users by May this year.

The NHS 24 Scottish Centre for Telehealth and Telecare said the portal has a “growing community” of 15,000 members. However, the website averages 50,000 hits per month.

It added that recruitment is picking up significant momentum, with a 55% growth over the past six months.

“Living It Up was set up to creatively explore and pioneer how advances in technology could help support future change in our health and social care services, and realise citizen, organisational and economic benefits,” a statement says. 

"Recruitment has been challenging against the initial profile established at the outset of the programme.

"During the first two years of the programme, there were two cycles – the innovation cycle and the operational cycle. It has been accepted that innovating new products and services while scaling up at the same time is complex,” it says.

The Living it Up programme covers five geographic regions – Lothian, Forth Valley, Highland, Western Isles and Moray – and will enter a consolidation phase from next month.  

“As part of this the five local partnership areas will each take forward recruitment drives, actively engaging with their communities to ensure that as many people as possible can benefit from the developing service,” NHS 24 says.

Living it Up is part of the £23 million Dallas – Delivering Assisted Living Lifestyles At Scale – programme, which provided funding for four communities across the UK to move the delivery of assisted living technologies from pilot to the mainstream.

The government’s Technology Strategy Board (now the National Information Board) and the Department of Health invested £18 million and the Scottish government contributed £5 million.