An overview of digital readiness in dentistry - are we ready?

Digital technology is transforming how dentistry will be delivered in the future. Adopting digital opportunities will enable staff and patients to confidently navigate this new digital environment. We need to consider how dentistry is identifying and developing digital talent, building digital competence and future-proofing our teams. It also implies there must be a fundamental culture change in the way the profession collaborates with patients, clinicians, service commissioners and policymakers to deliver a sustainable digital transformation.

Applying Co-Design Principles for the Development of Health Education and Workforce Development.

The digital transformation of the UK's healthcare system necessitates the development of digital capabilities across the workforce. This ranges from basic digital literacy through to advanced skills with data and analytic methods. We present two projects that apply co-design to work with end-users and other stakeholders to produce a digital healthcare technologies capability framework aimed at the wider NHS workforce and a post graduate Clinical Data Science course aimed at bridging the gap between clinicians and the data-centric professions (e.g. analysts, data scientists, informaticians) to aid in digital transformation projects.

Educating the Healthcare Workforce to Support Digital Transformation.

Digital transformation of the healthcare workforce is a priority if we are to leverage the potential of digital technologies, artificial intelligence in clinical decision support and the potential of data captured within electronic health records. Educational programmes need to be diverse and support the digital novices through to the champions whom will be responsible for procuring and implementing digital solutions. In order to professionalise the workforce in this area, digital competencies need to be built into training from early on and be underpinned by frameworks that help to guide regulators and professional bodies and support educational providers to deliver them. Here we describe Manchester's involvement in the development of digital competency frameworks and our digital transformation education programmes that we have created, including a Massive Online Open Course and a professional development course for England's Topol Digital Fellows.