Digital & Data Skills

The safe and responsible adoption of digital, data and AI technologies in health and social care is critical for the UK’s economy, enhancing our productivity and competitiveness. With 80% of 2030’s predicted workforce already in employment, achieving these benefits requires to provide training, reskilling, and upskilling opportunities for individuals across all levels of the workforce.

We aim to cultivate an environment where skills gaps are understood, and organisations and training providers are empowered to deliver training to meet the needs of the current and future workforce in digital health.

To achieve this, NortHFutures will:

Facilitate a programme of skills and training activity for NHS workforce, industry, VCSE, local authorities and academic partners;
Fund the development and evaluation of training and upskilling that is responsive to regional and national needs;
Establish and champion pedagogic best practices to co-design and produce Open Source (OS) learning resources;
Develop (regional, national) capacity-building for upskilling and training.

NortHFutures is underpinned by an ethos of collaborative working and open source practices, to empower the sector and cultivate transformative change. A strong emphasis on partnership working ensures NortHFutures is able to be responsive to the merging challenges within North East and North Cumbria.

This work is being led by Matthew Forshaw (Newcastle University), Peter McMeekin (Northumbria University), Annette Hand (Northumbria University), and Antonia Dingle (Health Data Research (HDR) UK).

Supported by: Brian Castellani (Durham University), Heather Yemm (University of Sunderland), Nikhil Premchand, (Northumbria Healthcare), Sarah Cadman (HDR UK), Thomas Salisbury (Topol Digital Fellow, South Tees Hospitals), Toby James, (Northumbria Healthcare), Christopher Yau (HDR UK), Amanda Taylor-Beswick (University of Cumbria), Antonia Dingle (HDR UK), Justin Green (Newcastle Hospitals Trust (NUTH), and Newcastle University) and Andrew Simms (Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust).