Applications are now open for NHS digital leaders of the future to train at the NHS Digital Academy.
The Academy, delivered by a partnership of Imperial College, Harvard Medical School and The University of Edinburgh, under the guidance of Chief Executive Rachel Dunscombe, Director of Digital for Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust, was announced in August.
Will Smart, Chief Information Officer for Health and Care, says: “The NHS is a large, complex and dynamic organisation, and in order to fully harness technology to benefit our patients we need a professional informatics workshop. The NHS Digital Academy is one way to ensure that we continue to develop capable and competent digital leaders for the future.”
It is expected that 300 candidates - Clinical Information Officers, Chief Information Officers and aspiring digital leaders from clinical, and non clinical, backgrounds - will pass through the NHS Digital Academy, each spending 12 months studying part-time.
Part of a suite of work governed by the National Information Board, the Academy will support the Five Year Forward View Next Steps strategy by providing staff with the skills they need to use information and technology to reduce pressure on services and improve care quality.
The academy was set up in response to Professor Robert Wachter’s Making IT Work report, which observed that the NHS was lacking in leaders who could drive forward this digital transformation.
Dr Harpreet Sood, Associate Chief Clinical Information Officer at NHS England and Lead on NHS Digital Academy, says: “Investing in the people tasked with making technology work in the NHS is as important as investing in the technology itself.
“This is why we’ve created the NHS Digital Academy because we want the NHS modernisation to be led by world class leaders.”
The course will cover the key skills and expertise needed to lead strategy for digital innovation and how to harness the power of data and understand how it can be used to support decision-making, planning and delivery of better health and care and better patient outcomes.
The NHS Digital Academy will be seeking accreditation from the Federation of Informatics Professionals (Fed-IP) and the Faculty of Clinical Informatics (FCI).
More information, including how to apply, is available here: www.england.nhs.uk/digitalacademy/
