The Digital Care Collaborative Scotland (DCCS) — launched in December 2025 and hosted by the Digital Health & Care Innovation Centre (DHI) — has been established to accelerate digital innovation across Scotland’s social care, social work and housing sectors. Delivered in partnership with national organisations, the DCCS provides the strategic coordination, alignment and knowledge exchange needed to enable sustainable, scalable innovation in care.
Bringing together leaders from social care, social work, housing, research, policy and industry, the Collaborative acts as a unified partnership to drive progress through shared priorities, practical learning and coordinated national action.
Aligned with Scotland’s digital care strategy, the DCCS supports key priorities for health and social care. It complements and connects with wider innovation activity, including the ANIA (Accelerated National Innovation Adoption) pathway and regional Innovation Hubs, ensuring social care benefits from parity of opportunity and investment.
Why the DCCS Was Created
The Collaborative was shaped by a landscape review of digital innovation in social care in Scotland. The review identified significant barriers that currently prevent digital innovation from thriving across social care:
- Infrastructure and support systems do not adequately enable innovation adoption in social care, social work and housing.
- The sector is under‑represented in entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystems.
- There is no equivalent system of support to those available in health or education.
- Evidence, learning and evaluation around digital technologies are fragmented and difficult to access.
- Innovation activity lacks national coordination.
- Strategic leadership across the wider system is inconsistent.
The DCCS directly responds to these challenges, establishing the conditions for a more coherent and supportive ecosystem for digital social care innovation.
Five Priority Areas
Working with national bodies, industry partners and care providers, the DCCS will focus on five priorities, drawing on evidence from research and learning across the UK:
- Creating the Conditions for Digital Care Innovation
Developing a national framework and pathway that sets priorities, supports service parity, and positions the DCCS as a trusted source of guidance. - Collaboration and Knowledge Exchange
Establishing spaces — physical and virtual — where care, technology and policy partners can connect, share learning and collaborate locally, nationally and internationally. - Learning and Evidence Building
Showcasing best practice, consolidating evidence, and leveraging funding and research opportunities to accelerate innovation. - Developing Resources and Practical Tools
Providing simple, actionable tools and examples to enable organisations to apply innovation in practice. - Workforce Capability and Learner Pathways
Supporting organisations such as NES and the SSSC to build leadership capability and workforce confidence in digital innovation.
Personal Reflections
As DHI’s lead for the DCCS, I am continually struck by both the diversity of services across social care, social work and housing, and the scale of untapped innovation potential. There is a significant opportunity to focus more strongly on prevention and early intervention, to amplify work already underway, and to create the conditions that attract greater inward investment into Scotland.
In my role as Chair of Hanover Housing, one of Scotland’s largest specialist registered social landlords, I am also reminded of the critical role that housing plays within our wider health and social care ecosystem. Housing remains a foundational element of wellbeing, independence and community resilience — and has enormous potential to drive digitally enabled prevention and support.
Prof Margaret Whoriskey
Digital Health and Care Innovation Centre