The Scottish government has shared how the objectives set out in its Women’s Health Plan for Scotland are to be achieved across two phases.
The first phase sets out priority areas to: ensure women have access to specialist menopause services for advice and support on the diagnosis and management of menopause; access to information for girls and women on menstrual health and management options; access for women to appropriate support, speedy diagnosis and best treatment for endometriosis; access to abortion and contraception services; rapid and easily accessible postnatal contraception; and to reduce inequalities in health outcomes for women’s general health, including work on cardiac disease.
Phase two of the Women’s Health Plan for Scotland 2026 – 2029 prioritises innovation and better data in supporting access to care for women and girls, with the government committing to working collaboratively with partners across academia, industry, and the third sector to identify opportunities to transform care. NHS Scotland Innovation Hubs will support testing and scaling of innovations in three key areas: menopause care, gynaecological care, and data to enable effective innovation.
A failure to gather data on disease and disease outcomes for women is highlighted as limiting knowledge and impacting health outcomes, with plans to improve women’s health research and data with continued funding through the Women’s Health Research Fund.
Data will also be improved by working with health boards to understand and utilise data at a local level, and review data to disaggregate by sex “as a first step toward intersectional data on women’s health”. A minimum dataset for menstrual data on cycle length and bleeding volume will be created and incorporated into EHRs as well as research studies to help ensure it is routinely recorded.
The NHS Inform Women’s Health Platform will be expanded with information on topics such as vaginal health, UTIs, menopause, and bone health. Work will also be undertaken to develop a standardised national minimum dataset for postpartum contraception activity, and existing data will be utilised to promote access to post-abortion contraception.
Jenni Minto, minister for public health and women’s health, said: “System-wide renewal is essential, and this Plan aligns with wider work to improve access to treatment and services, shift care into communities, expand digital innovation and focus on prevention. These systematic changes will benefit women and help achieve our ambition: for women and girls to enjoy the best possible health throughout their lives.”
Wider trend: Health tech in Scotland
The digital health and care directorate in Scotland has issued an update for 2025/26 on its national digital health and care strategy delivery plan, pointing to current status and anticipated delivery dates for work across digital access, inclusion, services, foundations and skills. Over the last year, the directorate highlights its digital inclusion programme, “Connecting to Care”, launched in April 2024 with seven funded projects across Scotland, developing models of digital inclusion to support people in accessing digital services and support.
NHS National Services Scotland (NSS) launched a market research exercise late last year into a new national sexual health system to potentially replace the existing solution. Scotland’s current national sexual health system has been in use since 2008, with NSS now looking to explore the market to understand solutions that can provide clinicians with digital patient management services. According to NSS, they’re at the market research stage at the moment and are planning to look at “if new options are available and where their current system sits in the market”, with the ultimate end goal to replace their current contract.
NSS also published a prior information notice for the procurement of a digital cognitive behaviour therapy multi-treatment platform. The agency aims to procure a digital solution to support self-management CBT digital therapeutic treatments across areas including depression, anxiety, OCD, panic attacks and other similar disorders. NSS has outlined several key deliverables of the platform, including the ability to offer tailored treatment for various conditions “across a range of demographic groups, including young people and older adults” in order to “ensure the maximum effectiveness”.
