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Digital Health Awards 2022 winner profile: Rob Ratcliffe

by Lauren Hoodless
written by Lauren Hoodless

Rob RatcliffeWhat is your current role?  

I am currently a district nursing clinical lead at Midlands Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and have been for the past few years.

How did you get to where you are now? 

I started my NHS career as a clinical support worker some 24 years ago. I didn’t think for one second that I would become a registered nurse at that point due to having dyslexia. I was actively encouraged to apply to undertake my pre-registration course at a local university and that’s when I started to get interested in digital ways to support me through the programme. I started the course in September 2002 and have never looked back since.

How did it feel to win Rising Star in Digital Nursing? 

I still can’t really believe it. I was nominated by IT colleagues at work due to a project that I had been working on. I have previously worked on several IT projects however the roll out of total mobile is by far the largest. I am not sure if winning has really sunk in at all yet. I do keep looking at the award every now and then to remind myself.

At the end of the day, I am a nurse who loves the thought of improving things for patients and staff. Using digital in my work place has really helped me both inform the patients that I work with about their health needs and also has helped staff by speeding up the documentation element of providing care in a patient’s home. The use of a tablet device enables us to use lots of digital in the hope that this will improve the outcomes for our patients.

What is the most challenging part of your role? 

No day is ever the same. I am community based and therefore travel to the majority of my patients. We do run ambulatory clinic services alongside home visits, however it’s the home care that I really love. Some of the main challenges are the huge health inequalities within the areas that I cover.

I also look at all incidents raised for my area and feed back to the reporter (hopefully in a timely manner). Having enough hours in the day is another challenge, and just trying to ensure that we do the best we can as a service, ensuring the patient is truly at the heart of everything that we do.

Within your organisation, what is the most significant digital achievement of the past 12 months? 

I work for a very forward thinking organisation. Midlands Partnership Foundation Trust is relatively new – it has its own digital strategy and really listens to staff to see what the needs of services are. There are currently lots of things going on within the trust. As the trust covers both physical and mental health services there has been lots of work done by IT and ward-based staff on remote monitoring of patients within inpatient settings.

The trust is currently looking at dictation software and has spent the last 12 months engaging with staff to ensure it is getting things right, working hugely on the current connectivity and performance when out and about. All community nursing staff (physical health) now have laptops, tablets and phones to use which makes life much less stressful.

Probably the most significant achievement for the trust is the rollout of total mobile in which I have been heavily involved. It has enabled community nursing to really look at the way it was working and change it for the better using digital.

What is the largest barrier to achieving digital transformation?

I think at the beginning it was connectivity, especially when out in the community. The trust covers the whole of North, South and East Staffordshire and staff like to be involved in new clinical systems, appearing to disengage if they feel that they are not being listened to.

Whenever a new system is being developed it has to be fit for purpose and do the job it is supposed to do, and ideally save clinicians time.

What do you hope to digitally achieve within your role and organisation over the next 12 months?

I have worked for the organisation for the last 14 years and will hopefully continue to engage with the clinical staff and drive forward the trust’s digital agenda to ensure that digital is truly embedded in everyday practice.

My new work stream is to start to look at the way in which we communicate with our GP colleagues and care agencies. It will of course have a digital answer, however it’s just looking to ensure it will work for all.

You can find out who scooped each award here

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Digital Health Awards 2022 winner profile: Peter Thomas

by Lauren Hoodless
written by Lauren Hoodless

What is your current role? Peter Thomas award win

I am CCIO at Moorfields Eye Hospital and director of digital medicine there. My role is to support the development of a digital environment that actively benefits clinical services, as well as to champion a move towards digitally-delivered services. I’m also on secondment part-time to NHS Digital where I act as a clinical lead for digital on the national eyecare programme.

How did you become a CCIO?

I’d been interested in the application of technology to clinical practice for many years before I became a consultant paediatric ophthalmologist at Moorfields in 2017. Earlier in my career I had spent time working in the IT industry and had undertaken a PhD in computational neuroscience.

After I joined Moorfields, I was appointed to a new role working under the CCIO as clinical director of digital innovation where I focused on novel applications of technology to support clinical care. I took over as CCIO last year as a natural career progression from the innovation role.

To get myself ready to be a CCIO, I joined cohort two of the NHS Digital Academy, and took every opportunity to professionalise in clinical informatics, including fellowship of the Faculty of Clinical Informatics.

How did it feel to win CCIO of the Year?

Fantastic. We’ve taken a new approach to delivering clinical informatics at Moorfields, founding the UK’s first department of digital medicine. As with anything new, it’s great when the profession recognises that you’re going in the right direction. Although it’s my name on the award, I’m really only a representative of the brilliant team at Moorfields.

What is the most challenging part of your role?

It’s an interesting time in digital transformation of healthcare because there are so many different areas that you could choose to focus on. At Moorfields we have some of the most capable and innovative clinicians and researchers anywhere in the world and it would be easy to work on innovation projects full time.

However, I have to balance that against a very significant transformation programme to get our core infrastructure ready for a new hospital move in 2026. Getting the balance right is a challenge.

Within your organisation, what is the most significant digital achievement of the past 12 months?

From a clinical informatics perspective, it has been the creation of a department of digital medicine. As part of my Digital Academy research, I gathered feedback from 40 other digital leaders in the NHS to discover how they bring the clinical and technology aspects of digital transformation together.

The new department arose from that work and is supporting us to develop a team of digital clinicians who are professionalising as clinical informaticians and specialising in topics such as digital safety, exclusion, engagement, and innovation. This puts us in a much better place going forwards as we now have an engine to drive clinical informatics that is formalised, well embedded, and sufficiently resourced.

What is the largest barrier to achieving digital transformation?

Looking across the entire healthcare sector, I think it’s the scale and breadth of the change needed. We have hospitals and institutions that, in some cases, have centuries of tradition and process built around traditional models of medicine.

We’re now expecting those same organisations to deliver digital services that we would normally associate with digitally-native organisations that boast large IT departments and have their entire business model built around digital health. At the same time, those hospitals are also struggling with significant pressures and constraints. It’s a process that will take time.

What do you hope to digitally achieve within your role and organisation over the next 12 months?

We have significant improvements to our core systems in the pipeline, and we’ve built the foundations to begin moving exciting technologies like remote monitoring and clinical AI out of research and pilot programmes and into routine clinical care. In the next 12 months, I’d like to implement more of these future-looking technologies into routine care.

What advice would you give to anyone who is thinking of becoming a CCIO?

Take every opportunity to professionalise – there’s a huge chasm between the understanding I had as a clinician-enthusiast, and the understanding I’m developing now through things like the NHS Digital Academy.

Many will still be coming into clinical informatics without knowing that there is a network of professionals across the UK who can support you, and a whole host of conferences and professional development activities that you can use to build a network (such as the excellent Digital Health Summer Schools).

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Looking back at my first in person Digital Health Summer Schools

by Lauren Hoodless
written by Lauren Hoodless

In recent years, Digital Health Networks have made an active effort to include more nurses which has helped to drive the digital nursing agenda. I signed up to the CNIO network two years ago and attended my first in person Summer Schools event on July 14 and 15 2022. It was one of the most welcoming environments in health care I have ever experienced.

The BBQ on the first night was a great start to the networking. I was pleased to meet so many nurses face-to-face, having connected on twitter, and they offered their congratulations for being shortlisted for future digital leader of the year. The general buzz for the days to follow was great, with seasoned summer school attendees supporting and guiding us newcomers through the event.

NHS mergers and Integrated Care

The kick off to the event was interesting, we got a real insight from Simon Bolton, and I appreciated that he tackled the mergers of NHS England and NHS Digital head on. He talked about wanting to listen and speak to people to get the purpose of NHS England right.

Then later there was a panel which covered Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) which provided me with such a great insight. The best speaker here was Rushownara Miah (head of business intelligence at Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust). Hearing her talk about the opportunities that she sees available with the data set my researcher brain going and I gave her an instant followon twitter.

On that note, my standout session from day one was the introduction to Artificial Intelligence (AI). Haris Shuaib (consultant clinical scientist – Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust) spoke my language and got me excited about AI, and not in the classic ‘tech will change everything’ way. He gave very real-world examples of the limitations and the options for AI. Plus, when I went to speak to him after for a chat on the bus, he was open to discussing the options for its impact on nursing. This is an area that we are currently looking at as part of the Phillips Ives Review, and I am looking forward to catching up with him again to explore the topic more.

The gala dinner was well co-ordinated, it can be quite daunting to be told that you have to spend the night sat on a table with a group of people you do not yet know. However, I sat next to the wonderful Devesh Sinha (CCIOBarking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust ) and Peter Thomas (CCIO of the year from Moorfields), they both made it extremely easy. We discussed research, career journeys, next steps, and NHS culture with such enthusiasm.

Split screens and Phillips Ives

The keynote of day two was by one of my favourite speakers – Matthew Taylor (CEO NHS Confederation), I heard repetition of his split screen analogy throughout the rest of the day. The analogy perfectly depicted the need in the NHS to focus on both the immediate problems and the long-term strategy for resilience in the future. I am always impressed by how well he speaks and how he works the audience, he never professes to have the all the answers, but he is realistic of the state the NHS is currently in.

This was followed by a laughter filled talk from Rhidian Hurle (CCIO NHS Wales Informatics Service), I enjoyed this as I think we need to hear more from the other nations. I am quite jealous of the Welsh infrastructure, and I want to see and understand the impact of their investments.

Then Natasha Phillips (CNIO at NHS England) spread the message of the Phillips Ives Review – this filled me with pride, that I am currently working one of the biggest reviews and shaping of the nursing workforce that we have ever seen. Next up was Sonia Patel (CIO at NHS England) and she acknowledged that we are improving on the diversity in the room, but we still have a long way to go. This is something I whole heartedly agree with, my challenge to digital health networks is to keep increasing a diverse number of future leaders in the room.

The closing session of the day was my opportunity to speak on, ‘Preventing the Brain Drain’. It was with a fantastic panel; Melissa Andison (associate CCIO at Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust), Darren Mckenna (director of Digital Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust) and Stacey Hatton (CNIO at Barnsley NHS Foundation Trust), chaired by Jon Hoeksma (CEO at Digital Health). When I was first asked to speak on this panel, I was not sure that I had anything to offer the room on the subject. Then I began to think about what has kept me working in the NHS and what has kept me passionate. I have been fortunate and supported in my career to reach for the stars and explore my passions. I am currently doing my MSc in Advanced Clinical Practice and I was supported to apply to the Florence Nightingale Foundation, from which I gained my fellowship with NHS England. I hope the session influenced some digital leaders and gave them something to consider. Staff retention starts with organisational culture.

Summer Schools have once again ignited my passion. I honestly believe that in the digital health space we have some of the best individuals all striving to improve care for the patient and people who use our services. If we maintain this energy, passion, and drive – I know the transformation that we need will happen within the NHS.

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