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NHS Code4Health programme will improve digital literacy for clinicians

NHS England is supporting frontline staff and healthcare professionals to develop apps and other digital tools to become the centrepiece of an unprecedented initiative to harness the information revolution and make a real difference to patient care.

National Director for Patients and Information Tim Kelsey will launch the NHS Code4Health programme today (Tuesday 3 March) at the UK e-Health Week event being staged at London Olympia.  NHS Code4Health provides doctors, nurses and care staff with specialist training and support to create and deliver their own IT programmes and products to increase their involvement in the development of online tools that will directly lead to improved care.

NHS staff can apply for programmes including ‘App in a day’ which takes delegates through the entire process of App development from design to delivery in just one learning session.

Beyond the training, the aim of the programme is to bring together like-minded individuals and organisations of all sizes to form communities where they can share ideas, insight and tools on how to improve healthcare through the adoption of technology.

Local Code4Health communities will belong to a wider Code4Health network and be encouraged to share their successes, becoming a powerful vehicle for spreading knowledge and innovation across the NHS.

Stimulation will be provided through innovation prize funding and access to the Code4Health development platform where users can learn about NHS IT systems, explore available interfaces and build and test Apps.

NHS England will continue to drive the initiative, supporting collaboration and the growth of communities by providing resource, expertise and access to the full community network.

Tim Kelsey, National Director for Patients and Information said: “Finding the best innovations in health and social care and spreading them to every corner of the system is crucial to ensuring services evolve to meet the changing needs of patients.

The Code4Health programme will not only encourage those who work in the NHS to engage with technology but also empower them to shape it into digital solutions which are meaningful to them and their work.”

Code4Health is a key part of the National Information Board’s Framework for Action, Personalised Health and Care 2020.

The initial programme of training is delivered by Livecode, a UK company experienced in open source technology and teaching digital literacy, and beyond that we expect a wide range of large and small organisations to support the communities.  The training pilot was oversubscribed with more than 100 clinicians from 17 care providers taking part.

6 comments

  1. Dr Zuhair Noori says:

    I think it is a timely project for promotion of available web site to cater for clinicians and their patient needs of reflection opportunity in the form of easy inviting audit, and research .I dream that one day I can clike on key word like rehabilitation and the search engine would show me my trend of care and through automated updated link to national, local and international guidline and standard. I dream to when I click discharge it autmaticaly list salient feature of the illness geared for patient and another seperate one geared for network clinician.

  2. An IT Development Manager says:

    I think clinicians should be involved in software developments to ensure success however writing the software is not only an exceptionally bad use of resource but could also be very dangerous.

    This will waste very highly paid and highly skilled clinical staff’s time, resulting in less time spent with patients together with poorly written, disparate, unsupportable and inappropriate applications with no thought for the overall IT strategy. Developers aren’t cheap but they don’t cost as much as consultants so if it has to be written bespoke just get professional developers who know what they are doing. You wouldn’t ask software developers to get a little training and perform surgery so why would you ask surgeons to get a little training and write software.

  3. Richard Budd says:

    Where can we register interest in this please?

  4. Christine Travers Brookes says:

    I would like to be part of this and learn how to develop Apps as I have many ideas and lots of experience in the field of health visiting. I can see the potential benefits to clients and service providers.
    Please let me know if I can join the project.

  5. Christine Travers Brookes says:

    I would like to be part of the App development scene. I have been a health visitor for over 30 years and I will be retiring this month, but I will continue to work on the health visiting bank.
    I have many skills in my field and lots of ideas about how Apps could benefit clients.
    I would love to attend the ” App in a day ” programme and work with colleagues from my Trust to benefit clients. I am fairly good with technology in general and use an IPad as well as a windows based computer. I have no computer coding experience.

  6. Victoria.S says:

    I am here to do my job as a doctor, not an IT programmer. We have enough tools to keep our eyes glued to computer screen rather than on our patients. It’s better to spend more money for the training of the doctors not to create technological short cuts to solve health problems.That would grow a generation of clinicians who would never have professional intuition.