Scotland publishes Bill for National Care Service  Landmark plans for a National Care Service have been published in the form of a Bill laid before the Scottish Parliament. The Bill will allow ministers to transfer responsibility for adult and children’s social care from local authorities to the new service, which will be organised into care boards responsible for delivering care locally. The Bill also makes provisions to share information between the NCS and the NHS and introduces some new rights for carers and people living in adult care homes. The move follows a public consultation in 2021 and ministers hope to have the new service up and running by 2026.   Health secretary Humza Yousaf said the Bill would “end the postcode lottery of care in Scotland”, which he described as an “ambitious” but “vital” goal. However, unions and opposition parties condemned the move. Unite described it as “the biggest power grab in the era of devolution” and described the transfer of property and services from local authorities to the Scottish Government as “an assault on democracy.” The GMB said insufficient notice had been taken of the rights and views of care workers (The Independent). And the Scottish Conservatives said the social care system needed more frontline support, not a “bureaucratic overhaul” that would consume resources.

English government invites bids to become an ‘integration frontrunner’ The government is looking for five or six ‘integration frontrunners’ to test ideas for ‘radical new approaches’ to care, with an initial focus on speeding up discharge from hospitals. Ministers and NHS England have written to NHS organisations and councils asking for bids for the initiative by 30 June. The programme will be coordinated by the national health and care discharge taskforce, chaired by Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust. Comments on the Health Service Journal asked how the ‘frontrunners’ would add to similar pilot initiatives, such as new model care vanguards and integration pioneers when there is no additional capacity or staffing.

UnitedHealth Group’s Optum arm to buy EMIS Group US insurance giant UnitedHealth Group has agreed to acquire UK GP systems provider EMIS Group in a deal worth £1.24 billion, digitalhealth.net has reported, working from a Reuters release. Optum Health Solutions, an arm of UnitedHealth Group that provides analytics tools and services to support commissioning and population health management, will acquire EMIS which, along with TPP, dominates the primary care IT market. EMIS chief executive Andy Thorburn said the deal would give EMIS additional resources and expertise to “better support the NHS and clinicians” and help it to fulfill its mission of “better care through technology innovation.”

Health IT news: COPI ends; Palantir comes under scrutiny; NHS Scotland launches innovation accelerator; Innovate UK opens new fund The control of patient information or COPI regime that was introduced to enable information sharing during the Covid-19 pandemic will end on 30 June 2022. An opinion piece on digitalhealth.net written by Hazel Jones of Made Tech notes that this will restore IG controls governing the sharing of information by services, planners and researchers to share information; but that it’s needed to maintain public trust. Meanwhile, mainstream media outlets are starting to investigate Palantir, the US big data company that created the Covid-19 Data Store and is widely expected to be awarded a £360 million contract to run a new NHS Federated Data Platform.   Privacy and security experts questioned both the data platform concept and Palantir’s involvement in The Guardian. NHS Scotland has launched an Accelerated National Innovation Adoption pathway to speed up the development, assessment and deployment of innovation, the Health Tech Newspaper has reported. Innovate UK is planning to open a £30 million fund to offer support of up to £50,000 to small and micro businesses with ideas to support net-zero targets or help people to self-care, the Health Tech Newspaper has reported. System C has appointed Guy Lucchi as the new managing director of healthcare, the HTN has also reported. He previously worked in Manchester.