We're working with NHS Providers to support digital development in NHS Trusts

Over the next 3 years, we’ll be working together to deliver digital development sessions for NHS Trust boards all over the country.

This week we released our first guide. It’s called ‘A new era of digital leadership’.

We’ve said ‘new era’ because digital transformation isn’t new to health. Every Trust has taken on technology projects and digital initiatives. All have seen some benefits, all have got some scars. There’s an argument to be made that no sector stands to gain more from internet-era ways of working and technology, yet none has been more wounded by its flawed implementation.

What is new is the impact a global pandemic has had on the NHS. While coronavirus has accelerated the adoption of some technology across healthcare, that doesn’t mean the NHS has been transformed overnight. Far from it. Achieving lasting change – and the improvements to clinical outcomes, patient experience and staff satisfaction that can be gained from it – means looking at underlying ways of working, and seeing how they need to evolve.

That will mean leaders have to develop curiosity and confidence in new areas. Which, hopefully, is where Public Digital will come in. We’ll be running board development sessions around the country – remote for now, but hopefully not forever – publishing guides and convening peer learning events. Much of that will involve sharing our mistakes, so others don’t have to make the same ones.