DigiShift 94 - designing Scotland’s digital front door: user-centred lessons

Scottish Government’s Digital Front Door programme aims to provide everyone in Scotland with an online system to manage their health and care. It forms part of the national Digital Health and Care strategy, which commits to people having greater access to their health and social care information. It also contributes to the ‘digital first’ approach that the Scottish Government has embedded in policies such as the Population Health Framework.

Following its initial launch in Lanarkshire, MyCare.scot is due to be launched to the whole population in April this year. MyCare.scot is delivered by NHS Education for Scotland, where Rohan Gunatillake heads up the User-Centred Design team. We are delighted that he has agreed to contribute to the Digishift series by lifting the lid on what it’s like to apply user-centred design approaches within a unique national digital service.

Rohan Gunatillake is the Head of User Centred Design at NHS Education for Scotland, and has been leading the design work behind MyCare.scot since late 2024. He has a background in public sector design practice and digital innovation in the arts. Before joining NHS Scotland in 2018, he ran Mindfulness Everywhere, a Glasgow-based company behind a range of successful consumer-facing products. Rohan was once named by Wired magazine in their Smart List of 50 people who will change the world.

This session is for anyone in the voluntary sector, public service leaders, digital practitioners, policymakers, and those interested in the future of digital government and service design. Whether you’re responsible for digital strategy, service delivery, or simply passionate about building better services, you’ll gain invaluable insights and practical ideas to take forward.

Since March 2020, DigiShift has helped thousands of charities and non-profit organisations learn and collaborate. Run in collaboration between SCVO and Third Sector Lab, and supported by the National Lottery Community Fund (Scotland), DigiShift offers practical and actionable advice from digital experts.