Exploring public health data with the ScotPHO Profiles Tool
Posted on 03 November 2026 by Victoria Elliott
- Population health
In this blog, Victoria Elliot, Principal Information Analyst at Public Health Scotland (PHS), shares what the ScotPHO Profiles Tool is, how it works, and how it’s already making a difference for our staff and organisations across Scotland.
How is health changing in our area? How do we compare with other parts of Scotland? And where might we need to focus improvement work?
These are the kinds of questions the Scotland’s Public Health Observatory (ScotPHO) helps us to answer.
Part of Public Health Scotland, ScotPHO provides data, intelligence and tools that help people and organisations explore Scotland’s health, understand inequalities and identify where interventions may be needed.
One of these resources is our highly popular ScotPHO Profiles Tool.
What is the ScotPHO Profiles Tool?
The ScotPHO Profiles Tool is a freely accessible online dashboard that brings together information about health, wellbeing, inequalities, the environment and Scotland’s population. It gives us a way to explore the picture for an area and understand how it compares with elsewhere.
You can compare geographical areas, explore changes over time and access the data behind the charts. You can also download visualisations to use in planning, service improvement and reporting, helping you share what the data shows with others.
With more than 250 indicators, the tool covers a wide range of themes, including health and wellbeing, mental health, inequalities and climate change. This means you can look beyond a single indicator and explore different aspects of population health together.
Who is it designed for?
This tool is designed for anyone who needs trusted population health information. Whether you work in public health, the NHS, a local authority or a voluntary organisation, or you’re a researcher or student, the profiles can help you explore the questions that matter to your work.
The tool is continually evolving, with recent updates making it easier to use and share information. You can now bookmark specific dashboard views and share them directly with others, making it simpler to return to useful information or point colleagues and partners to exactly what they need.
We frequently hear from our partner organisations across Scotland that the resource has become invaluable at both a local and national level. Here, some of its users share how the tool is making a difference.
“In my role, I need quick access to information on a range of public health related topics.
“In the past six months I’ve accessed a number of the PHS data products, be they specific topic reports, or the ScotPHO Profiles. I find the Profiles particularly helpful as they enable me to see how my health board is doing on a range of related indicators.
“I particularly like the functionality of the Population Health dashboard, which allows you to see how your board is doing in relation to the national average i.e. is it an orange, blue, or grey dot – this is a nice quick way of seeing how we are faring, or identify areas where we need to consider specific improvement work.”
"The ability to monitor health inequalities over time is fundamental to delivering the ambitions of Scotland’s Population Health Framework.
"It enables us and our partners to track progress, understand how outcomes vary across communities, and ensure that action is informed by robust evidence on where the greatest opportunities for improvement exist. When analysis is hosted on ScotPHO, we know that it will be seen by their existing broad user base.
"Continued development of the ScotPHO Profiles Tool, including the introduction of the new Health Inequalities view, has strengthened the value of the available evidence by summarising data clearly and highlighting key messages."
If you’re new to the ScotPHO Profiles Tool, the short video below provides a quick overview of how it works. Could the profiles help you understand a local trend, compare areas or explore inequalities?
Your feedback is important to us to keep the Tool evolving and improving. If you have any suggestions on the indicators we publish or how the Tool operates, please contact the ScotPHO team.
Find out more
Visit the ScotPHO Profiles Tool to explore the profiles and indicators.
For further information or guidance, contact the ScotPHO team.
Interested in how the app was built? If you’re a developer or curious about the code, you can explore the code behind this tool on Git Hub.
You can also see how we turn source data into indicators by exploring the indicator production scripts here.