Control of the health service in Scotland is to pass to a Scottish parliament after the decisive vote in favour of devolution. It marks the biggest constitutional change in the United Kingdom since the partition of Ireland 76 years ago and gives Scotland its own parliament for the first time in almost 300 years.

Health will be one of the main responsibilities of the Scottish legislature, but there are mixed views about the likely impact of the change in a country that has some of the worst health problems in the Western world. Some doctors believe that returning control to a more local level provides an unprecedented opportunity to …