Digital Skills and Training

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.

Our work in Digital Skills & Training has two key objectives:

Firstly, to understand digital skills requirements and gaps in the health and social care workforces.

We are conducting research to gain an understanding of the digital skills required in the health and care environments and the most pressing skills gaps.

We have conducted a review of the literature including national and regional policies and standards for health and social care development, professional digital competency frameworks, reviews, analyses, research on digital upskilling and implementation, and reporting on health and care digitalisation. The full review will be published in autumn 2025.

We have also run a series of focus groups with representatives of the health and social care workforces in the NENC region, to gain a better understanding of their organisations’ digital maturity, their immediate digital training needs, and how these needs can be best addressed. The data analysis is currently underway.

Secondly, to facilitate and fund the development and evaluation of training and upskilling that is responsive to regional and national needs.

To support the digital upskilling of the health and social care workforces, we are:

Funding and facilitating the development and delivery of training projects addressing evidenced training needs of the NENC health and care workforce;
Showcasing innovations in Digital Health;
Collecting the available training in Digital Health in the Training Catalyst;

Visit the Training Catalyst

Supporting and developing opportunities for professional development aimed at students and early career researchers.

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 can be responsive to the emerging challenges within North East and North Cumbria.

This work is led by David Kirk (Newcastle University) and Alan Platt (Northumbria University).

To learn more about our training and skills work, please reach out to Emma Letham.