A part of QA’s 2024 Learning Insights series.
The NHS’s mission to support and protect the health of the UK remains one constant in a changing world; changing technologies, demands and ways of working.
In 2024, an essential part of the framework that allows medical staff to deliver care where it's needed is digital technology. The future of the NHS rests as much on data analysis, engineers and cybersecurity teams as it does on doctors and nurses.
A Whitehall Monitor report by the Institute for Government found that the NHS, like nearly 40% of the UK labour market, has a lack of crucial technical and digital skills. This is the driving reason that 70% of transformation projects fail, across industries. Digital skills are the road to meaningful change.
That’s where we come in. With decades of expertise in digital skilling, we’re clearing the picture: helping NHS organisations to see through the noise and identify solutions to your current challenges, as well as identifying the way forward with digital transformation.
We’re sharing our overview of learning trends, with insights, recommendations, and predictions for the year in NHS digital training:
Is Data the key to the NHS’s biggest challenges?
In 2024, Data is King. Data analysis, processing and visualisation skills are among the most in-demand for every kind of organisation striving for digital transformation.
Few sectors, though, are dealing with more complex data, in bigger quantities, than healthcare.
We understand that managing vast amounts of patient data, and data of all kinds, is a high priority across the NHS. Security, data science, data literacy and AI will all be of critical importance for NHS staff and organisations to deliver the transformation the sector requires.
This places data skilling at the top of the agenda, as proper data mastery is the key to transforming NHS operations for the digital future.
According to the Health Foundation, stronger use of data will allow the NHS to:
- address the growing backlog and waiting times by using data-driven tools to increase efficiency, improve delivery and accelerate time to diagnosis and treatment
- measure and understand health inequalities to allocate resources more equitably
- innovate services, such as digital-first primary care, allowing patients to better manage their own health
- identify areas for care improvement, support prioritisation and develop effective interventions
- model future demand for care to ensure that funding, resources and plans support this.
To make these possibilities a reality, the NHS must first build a foundation of robust data skills. While tech can help deliver on your goals, change must start with people.
Enter QA and Microsoft… on a mission to help the NHS upskill in data with certifications in Excel, PowerBI and more. We’ve already helped over 200 trusts to develop their digital workforce. Discover how we assisted East London NHS trust to inject new data skills into their teams.
We understand that filling tens of thousands of new Digital, Data and Technology roles across the public sector won’t be achieved through recruitment alone. There simply aren’t enough people with the right skills out there. Instead, we can help you generate ‘home-grown’ talent that aligns with NHS values, is immersed in your ways of working, and is laser-focused on your organisational challenges and priorities.
QA has long been the chosen solution for a considerable number of healthcare organisations to solve industry-wide business problems such as the digital skills gap. Here are the pillars of our digital transformation strategy, formulated specifically for the NHS:
- Embed continuous learning into a change management framework that starts with building awareness and desire.
- Develop organisational capabilities needed across technical and non-technical communities.
- Achieve efficiencies where resource management is critical.
- Accelerate confidence within your teams to increase performance.
The NHS has a ‘missing ingredient’… time!
The biggest return that new technologies can offer the NHS is something you might not expect. That priceless and ever-elusive asset: time.
Surveys suggest that tech can accelerate the execution of various administrative functions in the NHS. For instance, electronic health records, and even speech-to-text clinical documentation tools, are among technologies that many see playing a key role in the future of NHS work.
Smarter, better automated systems that get information to the right people at the right time will save hours of wasted labour. Those hours can be redirected toward innovating, as well as saving lives.
What might that look like? Predictive tools, empowering the NHS to respond to public health events in the future? Effective implementation of AI? The possibilities are essentially endless, but our prediction is that digital expertise can help free up hardworking NHS staff to do even greater work.
If you’re ready to start building the NHS of the future, submit your details below and our team will be in touch.
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