In the past year NHS Scotland and its partners across health and social care have risen to the challenge of dealing with the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The NHS was put on an emergency footing – maintaining urgent care, flexing capacity from paused services to meet demand and developing innovative ways of working. Alongside this, community health and social care teams adapted their services to support as many people as possible in their own homes, working in closer and more integrated ways. The response of local public health teams in managing outbreaks has been outstanding. 

Those working across health and social care have shown incredible resolve and flexibility, in many cases being deployed into new roles and into new ways of working across our health and social care system. People felt united around a shared purpose, working with a spirit of kindness, openness and inclusivity. 

Re-mobilise, Recover, Re-design, published in May 2020, set out plans to restart as many aspects of our NHS as is possible. It set out that restoring normal services should mean capitalising on the gains we have made in ways of working, prioritisation and collaboration, with the roll-out of new techniques, technology and clinically safe but faster pathways to care for patients. 

We undoubtedly face significant challenges going forward. The pandemic has interrupted the progress we had made on reducing waiting times, and the effect of this will be felt for some time to come. We will need to tackle this with vigour, while meeting the challenge of rolling out the vaccination programme for COVID-19.

In particular, we must face up to what the pandemic has exposed about health inequalities in Scotland – and how it has exacerbated them. COVID-19 has caused disproportionate harm to older people, minority ethnic groups, the people living in greatest deprivation and those with obesity, diabetes and respiratory and cardiovascular disease.

To step up to meet these challenges, we must look to the achievements and successes of those working in health and social care during this challenging period. 

The NHS Scotland Event 2021 focused on what we have learned so far during the COVID-19 pandemic: the importance of kindness, of working together, of breaking down barriers and silos, of re-discovering our shared purpose. The Event showcased the work being done to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic while maintaining the progress made in redesigning services to improve access to services, to integrate care and to provide the highest quality person-centred, safe and effective health and care services as we move into a post-COVID world. 

Now is the time to grasp change: communicate, innovate, lead and collaborate. As we look to the future, the event programme will provide opportunities to reflect on what we can achieve when we work together to Re-mobilise, Recover and Re-design.