National workshop to understand digital needs and experiences launches

Health Education England, NHS England and NHS Digital, the agencies responsible for building a digital ready workforce, want to hear from informaticians. Together they have commissioned innovation and crowdsourcing experts, Clever Together, and media and professional networks specialist Digital Health to listen to the widest possible cross-section of health and care professionals about what can help improve the digital maturity of those who work in our health and care system.

From 22 November, we will host a three week national online workshop at DigitalReady.CleverTogether.com to explore the needs and experiences of informaticians, including those who we don't usually hear from - it will be a national conversation in partnership with BCS Health and Care, Federation of Informatics Professionals and the Faculty of Clinical Informatics.

We know our health and care system is full of informaticians and data experts they might be a Chief Information Officer, Chief Clinical Information Officer or a Director of Transformation, a Clinical Coder, a technical projects manager or a data scientist, a software developer, a business analyst, a librarian or a knowledge manager, a Database administrator, data security expert, IG professional or infrastructure lead.

We need informaticians to tell us what help and support they need to:

• improve the impact of their digital expertise, and
• improve the digital maturity of others more broadly.

Our online workshop provides an opportunity to ensure that the voices of a much broader cross-section of people than usual are heard and listened to.

Crucially, and most importantly, the results of our online workshop will form the basis for how the Digital Ready Workforce programme will prioritise and invest £6m over the next four years.

This really is the opportunity for informaticians to inform national strategy on the needs of our digital health and care workforce.

Strategic national investments have already been made in informatics: creating the NHS Digital Academy, establishing the Federation of Informatics Professionals, and the Faculty of Clinical Informatics. We need to collectively agree what additional investments should now be prioritised.

Taking part in the online workshop

From the 22 November informaticians and digital experts can share their ideas and vote on the ideas of others, all anonymously. This three week online workshop is using a novel research methodology, crowdsourcing, to help informaticians to work together.