The UK’s first Digital Health Academy, aiming to help build a digital-ready frontline workforce, is now open to all health and care staff across the UK.

According to the Organisation for the Review of Care and Health Apps (ORCHA), whilst 65 per cent of the public are open to trying digital health technologies, only a fraction of tools are recommended by health or care professionals. In total, amongst those using digital health, only a small proportion of recommendations came from healthcare professionals, with 17 per cent of recommendations coming from GPs, eight per cent from hospital doctors, and two per cent from nurses.

There is still no mandatory digital health training for health and care professionals, and the courses that frontline workers can attend are often scarcely available.

To combat this, ORCHA developed the Digital Health Academy, the foundation level modules of which will be freely available at orcha-academy.com and on the Health Education England NHS Learning Hub (learninghub.nhs.uk). The academy’s online training modules are designed specifically for frontline health and care professionals who want to use and recommend digital health tools but have been struggling to access the knowledge to do so safely.

The CPD-accredited Digital Health Academy programme includes two foundation modules which explain the function of health apps, the current digital health landscape, the barriers to using and adopting digital health and the importance of prescribing good quality digital health products.

Dr Neil Ralph, head of Health Education England Technology Enhanced Learning, said: "Covid-19 accelerated the rapid adoption of digital health across health and care services and the need to embed digital health in the long term. We are delighted that ORCHA has contributed its Digital Health Academy foundation content to the Learning Hub and look forward to hosting new content in the future, further supporting health and care professionals in their roles."