Scotland’s Digital Diabetes Ecosystem Inspires Global Action
- TRANSFORMERS.health
- June 16, 2025
- DIGITAL MATURITY INITIATIVE
- 0 Comments
As part of Lemonmint’s Digital Maturity Tour 2025, the Digital Health & Care Innovation Centre (DHI) in Glasgow convened health leaders to explore how digitally mature systems are advancing diabetes care. The visit highlighted how readiness frameworks, ethical data use, and cross-sector collaboration in Scotland are delivering real-world impact for people living with diabetes. Could this model inspire similar progress around the world?
The Digital Maturity Tour is on a Mission: We call on leaders, policymakers, and innovators to unlock the full potential of digital transformation for the healthcare of today.
The delegation included stakeholders from Scotland’s digital diabetes ecosystem and global voices such as Peter Schwarz, President of the International Diabetes Federation (IDF); Anke Diehl, Chief Transformation Officer of University Medicine Essen, Germany; and Abdulaziz Alahomod, Chief Innovation Officer at the Saudi Ministry of Health.
What Scotland is doing aligns closely with the vision and mission of the IDF to improve the quality of care for people with diabetes. I will explore how we can translate Scotland’s approach into other countries with strong digital foundations.
Prof. Peter Schwarz – President International Diabetes Federation
From Saudi Arabia to Germany – and Now Scotland
The Digital Maturity Tour is Lemonmint’s flagship initiative to foster international collaboration around health data readiness, governance, and innovation. Following earlier stops in Saudi Arabia and Germany, the visit to Scotland offered a standout case for the tour, with its mature digital health ecosystem and a strong national commitment to improving chronic care.
“Scotland was a natural stop for the Digital Maturity Tour. Its digital health ecosystem is among the most advanced in the world. It’s been incredibly valuable to learn from the leaders here, and I hope we’ll continue to deepen these relationships—with a visit to Germany hopefully on the horizon.”
Armin Scheuer, CEO of Lemonmint
Bridging Local Innovation and Global Strategy
Hosted in close partnership with DHI, the visit featured expert dialogues with NHS Scotland, Public Health Scotland, Safe Havens, and Research Data Scotland. It also built on Scotland’s contribution to the international digital maturity discourse—particularly through DHI’s chapter in the recent Springer publication Digital Maturity in Hospitals, titled: “Readiness and Digital Maturity: Promoting Innovation, Integration, and Scale in Scotland” by Janette Hughes, Michelle Brogan, and Ann Wales.
“As diabetes grows in prevalence globally and locally, it was energising to hear how the Scottish innovation ecosystem has developed infrastructures and initiatives that embed digital and data and transform care.”
Janette Hughes, Director of Planning and Performance at DHI
Professor Schwarz underscored the alignment between Scotland’s innovation-driven approach to diabetes care and IDF’s global mission to improve lives and reduce the burden of diabetes through prevention, research, and policy influence.
Parliamentary Dialogue and Future Collaboration
A key moment was a meeting with Emma Harper MSP, Co-Convenor of the Cross-Party Group on Diabetes in the Scottish Parliament, who underscored Scotland’s commitment to international knowledge exchange.
“Prof. Schwarz was very positive and complimentary towards the collaborative approach and actions taking place in Scotland, to support people in our communities who have diabetes, and how the rest of the world can learn from us.”
Emma Harper MSP, Co-Convenor of the Cross-Party Group on Diabetes
The tour concluded with a strategic dialogue on potential collaboration areas, including Scottish participation in Lemonmint’s Executive Dialogue on Building the Health Data Society. Everywhere. to be held on October 14, 2025, in Berlin.
