The Future is Tomorrow – can you help build it today?

By 2024 the vision for the NHS within the Acute (hospitals), community care and mental health care is that of a ‘core level’ of digitisation.

That is just under five years away.

So what is it that we need and from whom? The NHS Long Term Plan is out and does explain what we need, check it out here.

But what of the people who work within the NHS, how can they help or be a part of it?

Any one within the NHS who wants to learn about digital and tech, should be allowed to do see, free of restraints. This means that study days for this should be allowed, and for any worker at any level.

It is now fundamental that as many people who want to learn, can. Don’t hold them back you’ll be doing them, you and the nation a disservice.

What do we need?

Skills and understanding

of the technology being used and going to be used.

Training

has to be embedded into the modules and curriculum of courses within medical, nursing, social work and allied health professionals degrees. As well as a nationally set curriculum. I do not believe it should be mandatory for all NHS workers to complete, I would go for the option of if you do not want to do it you can opt out, but if you do you will cut short your career options or opportunities such as further training, secondments etc.

We can not go any further down this road with a front line work force that can barely understand who technological works in simple terms, let alone code or understands simple HTML. This just isn’t good enough.

Time within the NHS is an issue, as is overworked staff and staff shortages.

The greatest asset of the NHS is its workers.

The skills needed to build a technological NHS, first and first most needs an understanding, awareness and knowledge of:

Basics of technology and how it works

Basics of coding

What Responsible Tech is

What Tech for Good is

Basics of Data

Basics of AI

Imagine if you had a workforce with these basics on top of their day job roles.

Exciting.

That’s what it would be.

The immense forward thinking creativity and ideas potentially being produced, is what we need to harbour, create, grow and flourish.

And be given time to do this. How? Bring in coding groups for an hour or two during the working day, or after work, the weekends, make it apart of the working day, or as a study day.

Confidence and knowledge brings empowerment and satisfaction.

We need to build a network. Not another organisation.

Remembering that the NHS is not one big organisation but made up of many hundreds if not thousands of smaller trusts and teams will make it easier to understand the task ahead.

1. This is roughly how the NHS is split up:
2. The Acute (hospitals)
3. GPs
4. Community Teams (District nurses, rehab teams, neuro teams, learning disability, Mental Health)
5. Dentistry
6. School visitors and Nurses

Numbers one to three are commissioned services and contracts by the local clinical commissioning group (CCG).

Numbers four and five are commissioned by NHS England.

This is where the adoption and spread has to occur, if not it really is a waste of time and effort, at a local level. Where you can see what is and not working, where any type of change has a good or negative impact, but if you can see it or around the teams that are experiencing it, then adapting accordingly can happen quicker.

The system is fragmented and at times complicated one to understand, it is no wonder any technology does prevail, if it does it will have taken ten years to spread to the entire NHS network.

We need to start building and developing around local assets, people and teams, otherwise we are wasting time and money.

Are you a developer?

If you’re a developer and interested in Health and Social Care technology development, check out the NHS github account or NHS developers network site.

Are you an NHS or Social Services employee?

If you want to learn and are interested in anything coding or technology related, here are some things to get you started:

Khan Academy, CodeAcademy, Udemy, Udacity to name a few. A lot of it is free.

Codebar.io — don’t be afraid to attend if it’s your first time, they are the friendliest welcoming bunch of people who have been in the same position

CodeFirstGirls

Check out and be a part of OneHealth Tech.

Step outside of your comfort zone and be prepared for it to be hard, if not tough, but it will open up your world if you want it to to possibilities that we all need right now : )

We need a change and we need to network and interact better, we need a place to do this, whether locally or nationally. Just not another organisation to lead us, let people flourish you’ll be surprised at what it uncovers.