Building digital leadership in healthcare providers

To build the digital capability of the NHS’s leadership community, we partnered with NHS Providers to deliver a comprehensive development offer reaching every provider trust in the country with: bespoke board workshops, peer learning events, deep dive seminars, and a range of written outputs including 7 detailed guides to different aspects of digital transformation.

Our partnership with NHS Providers enabled them to bring their unparalleled reach and understanding of the NHS leadership community, expertise in developing peer learning and whole board support, alongside our deep knowledge of digital transformation and leadership to trusts of all types and specialisms across the country.

We began with a discovery phase, to understand the key knowledge gaps and learning needs of our audience and to plan a suite of interventions to meet them. We tested our initial content and activities with trusts before rolling out at scale

We continued to iterate throughout the programme, pivoting to respond to trusts' evolving needs. We have continuously adapted our content to keep pace with the constantly changing environment that NHS trusts operate in. We addressed topics such as board assurance of digital, developing digital strategy, supporting technology portfolio management, understanding AI, and implementing and optimising electronic patient record systems.

As well as our high satisfaction scores and evidence of impact on learning, the programme delivered many tangible qualitative benefits to individual trusts. For example some reorganised their team structures, others changed their governance approach, while others ripped up and rewrote their digital strategies as a result of our support.

The success and impact of the Digital Boards programme has been amplified by a further award to deliver the complementary programme for Integrated Care Systems.