HEALTH
Software clicks with joined-up treatment
Servelec connects digital innovations to improve patient care
BY KEVIN O’SULLIVAN
“It’s always better to be lucky than smart,” says Ian Crichton, reflecting on a fortuitous decision taken just days before the first lockdown on 23 March last year to move his people onto Microsoft Teams. “We got the green light on the Friday, and then on the Monday Boris Johnson said we all had to self-isolate. So, from that moment on we were able to work completely remotely and not miss a beat.” Crichton is chief executive of
digital care software company Servelec and has led his 450 colleagues from his home in the Scottish Borders ever since. Based in a remote part of the country, he’d long been a video conferenc- ing advocate and with the end of lockdown in sight he is adamant that he is not about to demand a rush back to the office. “Te days where the only way you could measure how well
someone did their job was by having them sitting in front of you are long gone,” he says. “I’d far rather our people were happy and productive. It’s not as if tech companies do everything in 2D, but a blended way of working really will help in future.” Crichton joined Servelec in
mid-2019; its products include the Rio electronic patient record platform for the community and mental health market, and Mosaic case management software for social care, the latter of which has five local authority customers in Scotland. But he is ambitious, and with a deep knowledge of how health and care services work (he led NHS National Services Scot- land for eight years), he wants to use an evident passion for public service reform to make bigger strides north of the Border.
In his view, joining up health and social care, though mandated by law since 2014, is the one big area where tech has a huge role to play in service transformation, but progress has, for a va- riety of reasons, been pain- fully slow. He puts it down to a combination of reasons: government has been put off by big IT problems, there is a chronic underinvestment in technology – particularly given
16 | FUTURESCOT | SPRING 2021
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