Emily Burch, Chief Nursing Information Officer, North London NHS Foundation Trust (NLFT), speaks to Intelligent Health.tech about the Digital & Data Academy, the power of AI in patient care, and the future of digital upskilling in the NHS.
The Digital & Data Academy has empowered NLFT staff with new skills in AI, data, and digital transformation. What has been the most surprising or rewarding impact you’ve seen so far?
It has been rewarding to see the passion and engagement of staff who want to develop themselves and use data to improve services and patient care.
I am lucky to have a unique viewpoint from where I sit in the organisation. I regularly hear senior leaders talk about the challenges the organisation is facing and how they’re trying to solve them. It’s great to be able to say: you have these incredible apprentices on this programme, who have the skills to fix that.
I think one of the biggest impacts we’ve seen so far is within a prison environment, where data challenges led to very few Care Programme Approaches being completed. The prison lead used process mapping to identify where the shortcomings were, implemented automation and used data dashboards to continue monitoring to understand where improvements could be made. In just a few months, 30 people now have tailored, multi-disciplinary care plans in place.
The NHS faces immense pressures, from staffing shortages to increasing demand for services. How has investing in digital literacy and data skills helped address these challenges?
Sadly, these challenges have always existed, but they were really brought to the fore during the pandemic. For a business, digital transformation is normally an iterative journey but for hospitals and healthcare practitioners, it wasn’t. They had to adapt overnight.
Some found this exciting, but others struggled, and there’s been a lot of fear and anxiety around what digitising means for nursing and therapeutic care. How do you do that through a screen? We’re seeing some student nurses now needing to be trained in social skills and how to have a face-to-face conversation with someone, as their entire training and education was done via virtual webinars or video calls.
I think investing in digital literacy and data skills is not just about arming people with new skills but also helping them understand how those things can support a therapeutic delivery of care. And to help them feel confident in the job they’re doing, including how data can help get the best out of them and their patient care. Staff then feel invested in and listened to. That’s one of the biggest impacts – showing staff that we care.
With the government’s AI plan announced yesterday, how do you see AI shaping the future of patient care, and what role will NLFT play in leading this transformation?
From a healthcare perspective, AI implementation is never going to be about replacing clinicians and NHS staff. What it does mean is that those who can use AI will free up more of their time from the burdensome admin tasks that aren’t the best use of their skills.
Take nursing for example – it’s what I’m most passionate about as a nurse myself. When we have to fill in 20 different forms across complex systems that aren’t talking to each other, we have less time to then spend with our patients, forging that human-to-human connection.
AI streamlines all of this. It’s not about making a decision on behalf of a clinician but about surfacing the relevant information to them, to enable that clinician to make an informed decision as efficiently as possible.
NLFT has become a champion in digital upskilling across the sector. What advice would you give to other NHS Trusts looking to replicate your success?
The biggest part of this journey was that it wasn’t just about delivering apprenticeship opportunities for staff. That’s great in itself, but if you’re just giving someone a development opportunity that has no links back into the organisation, it becomes a tick-box exercise.
The academy for us was a starting point to deliver the expertise that we needed. But now, we’ve worked alongside Multiverse to make sure that staff can come together to create communities of best practice, making sure that they understand the strategic direction of the organisation and that we join all of this up with senior leadership. Together as a group, we can then look at how we continue to use those skills moving forward.
I’d say my biggest piece of advice for other Trusts is going back to that point around making staff feel heard and invested in – skills and training can be a big part of that.
Looking ahead, how do you see the Digital & Data Academy evolving in the next few years, and what are your key priorities for driving further innovation?
We are releasing our five-year digital strategy soon and the academy is a big part of our people enablement piece within that. We have around 70 people enrolled at the moment and another cohort of 70-80 is planned very soon.
Our key priorities for driving further innovation will all centre around these new skills and how we continue to use them in new ways. How do we disseminate them across the entire organisation? Do we create new roles that we hadn’t thought of before?
Ultimately, this is all about ensuring the patient gets the right care. We don’t want to introduce a new process or technology that doesn’t solve a problem for a patient. So, when we’re thinking about innovation, it’s always patient-first and it’s always to support a therapeutic approach.
