Upskill.Health, announce the launch of their bitesize training platform, combining mobile, AI and VR technologies to deliver on-the-job training for busy NHS clinicians.
Recent national enquiries have concluded that better on-the-job training for NHS staff is essential to provide safe care for patients1,2,3.
Whilst most would agree that the NHS workforce is its greatest asset, the reality is that budgets and time allocated to on-the-job training are constantly squeezed, resulting in 40% of NHS clinicians reporting they’re not getting the training that they need4.
It’s understandable. With ever-increasing demand, releasing NHS staff from clinical shifts for hours or days at a time is hard to organise, and results in rota gaps that are even harder (and more expensive) to backfill.
But, with the NHS Longterm Workforce Plan5 making it clear the need to train more people, quickly than ever before; this is only going to become a bigger problem and the current approaches to on-the-job training isn’t suffice.
Face-to-face training (e.g. Clinical simulation) works but expensive and hard to scale, whilst online learning (e.g. E-learning) is passive, time-consuming and consistently demonstrates poor staff engagement.
Clinical Entrepreneur Dr Andrew Darby-Smith founded Upskill to harness the power of multiple emerging technologies in a training platform that for busy NHS clinicians.
As NHS clinician, Andrew has experienced the “inefficiencies and expense of formalised on-the-job training”, as well as the lack of ways to make the most of short periods of downtime during the workday – and is committed to fixing it.
“For decades, we’ve known what works in medical education; Spaced Repetition6 (i.e. ‘little and often’ training) and Active Recall7 (i.e. ‘using the information you’ve recently learnt’). Our current approaches don’t do either of these things well, resulting in inefficient training that’s infrequent and hard to access.
Upskill’s new platform does things differently. We’re combining mobile, artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual reality (VR) technologies to provide NHS staff with quality, bitesize (<10min) training experiences that are specifically designed to be completed ‘in the flow of work’. “says Dr Andrew Darby Smith
Upskill Health offers:
- Offering a mixture of short-form tutorial carousels and quizzes, their gamified, mobile app provides focused learning, that’s available on-demand.
- By combining the mobile app with intuitive VR simulation training, NHS staff have access to emergency ‘skills and drills’ training that’s relevant to their role, whenever they need it.
- The training was co designed with local NHS service users, and are developing AI-powered ‘digital avatars’ to connect real patient stories to frontline NHS staff through virtual roleplay and storytelling; offering the opportunity to amplify patient voices through NHS training at scale and in a way not previously possible.
“Imagine if we could make bitesize, on-the-job training available to every healthcare worker in the NHS wherever and whenever they need it…
Then go a step further; what if we then could amplify the voices of real NHS service users as virtual case studies in the training provided to NHS staff in their local area. Suddenly, on-the-job training becomes a way to amplify the lived experience of real patients to 1000s of frontline NHS staff and learn from real cases to improve patient safety”
Dr Andrew Darby-Smith
NHS Clinical Entrepreneur and Founder, Upskill.Health
Launched in January 2025, Upskill are on a mission to “supercharge the NHS workforce through better, faster training that’s cost effective at scale.”
The team are already working with three NHS trusts to co-design and pilot their innovative approach to on-the-job training in NHS maternity services, as well as supporting industry partners to deliver VR simulation training focused on emergency care to over 500 NHS staff across dozens of NHS sites.
Upskill is founded by founded by cohort 7 NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Dr Andrew Darby-Smith. To learn more, visit www.upskill.health, or follow the team on LinkedIn.
References:
- Kirkup B. The Report of the Morecambe Bay Investigation: An independent investigation into the management, delivery and outcomes of care provided by the maternity and neonatal services at the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust from
- Ockenden, D. Ockenden report – final: findings, conclusions and essential actions from the Independent Review of Maternity Services at The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust. (2022)
- Kirkup B. Reading the signals: maternity and neonatal services in East Kent–the report of the independent investigation. Department of Health and Social Care. (2022)
- NHS Staff Survey (2023)
- NHS long term workforce plan. NHS England, London. (2023)
- Dempster, F.N. Spacing effects and their implications for theory and practice. Educ Psychol Rev 1, 309–330 (1989)
- Jeffrey D. Karpicke, Janell R. Blunt. Retrieval Practice Produces More Learning than Elaborative Studying with Concept Mapping. Science 331,772-775. (2011)