NHS England Staff App Learnathon

Event details

The Learnathon: The first session takes place on 7th September 2023, when Marcus Appleton (exec lead in the Workforce, Training and Education Directorate, NHSE) and team will:

• Introduce the vision and scope of the NHS Staff App programme,

• Describe staff user needs and challenges underpinning them,

• Introduce some early design thinking emerging from the discovery work, plus related standards and interoperability challenges,

• Open the floor to all who attend to test and tease out what they’ve heard in a series of interactive workshops, and

• Work with all who attend to co-plan the second event – a two-day hack – using outputs from the Learnathon to run the hack.

Who should attend?

Both sessions are for anyone wishing to explore how digital, data, and technology improvements can be used to support a more connected, informed, empowered, and mobile workforce, helping steer the development of real-world, useful solutions that support the workforce.

So please sign up if you’re:

• A workforce system provider or technology provider,

• Public sector or private companies wishing to explore the use of workforce technologies to support NHS staff,

• A public sector or industry professional curious to get involved and help steer the development,

• Or a software developer keen to understand end-user needs.

What’s in it for me?

By taking a full and active part in these two interactive events, you’ll have the opportunity to hear from and work with NHS England colleagues, plus people with diverse skills and backgrounds, such as programmers, designers, entrepreneurs, and subject matter experts; to learn, collaborate and create innovative solutions.

It’s a great opportunity to come in on the ground floor of a new national programme, to provide insight and experience to help determine where the programme should go, what it should deliver, and how we should do it.

The sessions will be interactive, with short presentations seeding several workshops, providing all who attend the chance to have their say.

Can you tell me a little more?

User research is underway, looking at if and how staff could benefit from improved self-service apps that provide a digital front door to workforce services and transactions:

• Providing a better digital experience, by simplifying how staff interact with their organisation’s digital systems

• Reducing the need to switch between different apps or platforms,

• Automating some basic tasks to provide more time to care,

• With self-service options that give staff more control in their working lives

This is a big challenge that requires a system-wide response to ensure that digital apps, services or solutions that emerge are anchored in user needs and design thinking; and are underpinned by great infrastructure and interoperability.

The planned sessions are an opportunity to build on recent work to define workforce data standards and improve the interoperability of workforce systems and services that are critical to key events such as deployment and onboarding of staff members, rostering, and training.

Hosted by INTEROPen, the “Learnathon” will bring attendees up to date on all this work; introduce the vision, scope, and requirements of this new NHS England programme; and introduce a range of topics as a springboard to effectively define realistic use cases and goals which can be explored in a subsequent “Hack”. Themes covered in the Learnathon include:

• NHS Staff App Vision and Strategic Context

• User research results from Discovery

• National and local SME insights by:

1. Improving the staff recruitment and onboarding experience
2. Staff training systems and services overview, and
3. Enabling easier staff movement, including an overview of the digital staff passport
4. Rostering and staff control of their working patterns

• Early design thinking emerging from Discovery in areas such as

1. Trusted Frameworks & Verifiable Credentials
2. Emerging design concepts and patterns to test out
3. Workforce systems interoperability challenges

The subsequent Hack takes all the learning from the Learnathon into a two-day hands-on session to hopefully:

• Provide tangible examples of how we might create a digital ‘front door’ with multi-channel access to a range of digital services;

• So, users can interact seamlessly with multiple workforce services such as recruitment, onboarding, training, occupational health, provisioning of access and login

How can I take part?

1. Register for the events: Both events are free and advertised on Eventbrite, where you can register and pick up your ticket.

2. Follow regular pre-event communications: Regular event communications can be found on Ryver* here - Forum. +NHSStaffApp2023; and @INTEROPenAPI

3. Take part in the events planning committee: Anyone interested can also take part in planning calls to help shape the scope and agenda for both events. Please reach out to Team INTEROPen if you’d like to get involved.

4. Attend pre-event Q&A sessions: To help us prepare for the Learnathon and hackathon, there will also be two prep Q&A sessions taking place on the 9th August and 23rd August 2023 (see Ryver for more details on how to join).

These sessions provide an opportunity for anyone who plans to attend the two main events to come along ask questions about them, and equally respond to any queries brought up on the two calls.

The Q&A sessions will be led and facilitated by architects from NHSE, who’ll seed the conversation by:

• share some staff user stories that underpin our discovery work – so attendees get a flavour of the user base we’re working to

• Discuss some of the interoperability questions and challenges we foresee, when it comes to enabling different users to connect, converse and share workforce information

We look forward to seeing you there! Team INTEROPen and the NHS England Staff App team.

*Ryver is the INTEROPen community's collaboration platform. To access Ryver, you will need to be a member of INTEROPen (to ensure GDPR compliance). To become a member, please complete the online joining form here.

Event categories

• Learnathon
• Staff App
• NHS