Health Education England and Technology Enhanced Learning
Contact Our Team
For more information about how Halldale can add value to your marketing and promotional campaigns or to discuss event exhibitor and sponsorship opportunities, contact our team to find out more
The Americas -
holly.foster@halldale.com
Rest of World -
jeremy@halldale.com
Health Education England established a Technology Enhanced Learning programme to deliver the most effective education and training through evidence-based technologies.
Healthcare education is a complex and costly business, seemingly ever at risk from financial and technological disruption, and needing a coordinated, responsive and innovative system of delivery. To meet this need, Health Education England (HEE) was established as the executive public body responsible for the leadership and the coordination of healthcare education. Its mission is to provide the right workforce, with the right skills and values, in the right place at the right time to better meet the needs of patients - now and in the future.
The healthcare education landscape has changeddramatically in recent years due, at least in part, to advances intechnology-based learning resources, such as simulation and digital learningapplications. To help make the most of these advances, HEE established aTechnology Enhanced Learning (TEL) programme, whose purpose is to delivereducation and training that capitalises on a wide range of effective,evidence-based technologies.
The TEL programme has a vision thatpatients and the public in England benefit from a health and care workforce educatedusing the most effective evidence-based informed technology and techniques.
The three key areas of work within the TELprogramme are:
- The development and delivery of digital learning resources
- Support and guidance for simulation-based education
- Horizon scanning, innovation and piloting of new technology and techniques.
Further information on the TEL programme can be found here or by following @HEE_TEL.
e-Learning for Healthcare
The central pillar of the TEL programme ise-Learning for Healthcare (e-LfH). This is a programme that develops andcurates e-learning resources, and delivers them from its own platform, free ofcharge, directly to the entire health and care workforce in the UK,(approximately 3 million workers). The online sessions enhance traditionallearning, support existing teaching methods and provide a valuable referencepoint. The programme has over ten years of expertise and experience ofcollaborative working with health and care partners. There are now over 10,000individual learning sessions available on the platform. E-LfH provides thehealth and care workforce with:
- Free access to high qualityon-line learning resources 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
- Resources which are developedwith experts and validated by appropriate bodies such as Medical RoyalColleges;
- Multiple routes of access tolearning through local and national systems and personal electronic devices;
- Innovative learning methods toenhance the learning experience;
- Recording and recognition oflearning activity for use in e-portfolios and learning management systems.
In 2017 there were over three million e-learning sessions completed, (about 11,000 per day), demonstrating the strength and the value of the programme for the health and care workforce. 2018 is shaping up to be an even bigger year, with the number of completions expected to top 5 million. For more information visit.
The Learning Solution
Technology enhanced education in the formof, for example, simulation techniques, mobile applications, video or virtualreality is now widely used to deliver teaching and learning in health and care.However, the development of learning resources at a local level has beenlargely un-coordinated. In addition, there has been a reluctance to shareexpertise across sectors, leading to unnecessary duplication and expense. Wehave also found widespread evidence that significant learning takes placeoutside of formal learning environments, through informal learning activitiessuch as blogs, social media and discussion groups. These informal andcrowdsourced resources form a major part of an individual’s learning these daysand are frequently used for just-in-time/rapid learning interventions.
In an attempt to improve support tolearners, the TEL programme carried out an extensive research exerciseincluding desk studies, workshops and surveys, and in doing so identified theneed for a national ‘learning solution’ which would give commissioners,educators and learners ready access to thousands of formal, informaltechnology-based resources, as well as ideas and work in progress.
The “Learning Solution” is in betadevelopment with a publicly accessible version due for release in summer 2019.It will be a digital service to help everyone involved in healthcare educationshare and discover TEL resources, as well as the platform where learners willaccess our existing e-LfH programmes. Creators will be able to post their workon the site and share with others; whilst those looking for material will beable to search for and locate what they are seeking, easily and efficiently.The resources will either be hosted directly on the Learning Solution platformitself, or signposted to other affiliated sites. The interactive and collectivedesign of the Learning Solution site will, of course, offer opportunities forfeedback, collaboration and innovation and bring together a wide range ofcommunities of practice.
Features being planned include:
- A platform for users to find,share, access and collaborate on learning resources in all formats;
- A full record of learningactivity, whether formal or informal, online or face-to-face;
- A ratings and review systemdirecting users towards the best resources;
- A place for communities ofpractice to develop and flourish;
- Potential for an ‘invisibleLMS’, where users can interact with the system using chatbots accessed throughmessaging apps like Skype or Slack, allowing users to find and access learningresources without opening a browser or logging in to the Learning Solution;
- Potential for an AI drivenrecommendation engine which will personalise the learning experience for everyuser.
Building a Digitally Ready Workforce
To achieve the real potential of technologyand harness it for the benefit of individuals, everyone working in health andcare must be confident and competent in the use of digital and othertechnologies. HEE defines digital literacy as: “Those capabilities that fitsomeone for living, working, learning, participating and thriving in a digitalsociety.” Developing the digital capabilities of all staff has led us todevelop a framework that describes the type of digital capabilities that areneeded.
For the full digital capabilities frameworkgo to www.hee.nhs.uk/our-work/digital-literacy.
The Building a Digital Ready WorkforceProgramme is responsible for building the necessary digital capabilities acrossthe health and care workforce. The programme focuses on the digital literacy ofall staff; it also builds specific leadership skills in digital transformationand develops and utilises the professionalism of those dealing with data andinformation.
Recently the Digital Academy has beenfounded, providing an academic programme in digital leadership. The Faculty ofClinical Informatics has also been established and exists now as theprofessional membership body for all clinical informaticians.
National Framework for Simulation-basedEducation
Recent years have seen an upsurge in theuse of simulation-based education (SBE) in healthcare which, for some of thereasons described above, has not always delivered against the requirements ofDepartment of Health TEL Framework (DH 2011). It was recognised that there is aneed for an updated framework that defines the vision and expectations for anational approach to the delivery of SBE across England. The redrawn frameworksupports the development and commissioning of SBE, and in turn, will help shapepolicy and strategy, leading to a continual circular process that is qualityassured, transparent and robust.
The framework will:
- Encourage provision of highquality, educationally coherent SBE;
- Provide patient-centred,service driven SBE, enabling workforce development and transformation;
- Ensure equity of access acrossall sectors and geographic regions;
- Support commissioning andprovide value for money;
- Promote collaboration andsharing of resources;
- Promote and encourageinnovation.
Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality
In the course of developing the framework,some important relationships were developed with experts in the fields ofVirtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR). HEE has worked with experts todevelop a healthcare VR Lab. This VR Lab offers a practical space whereclinicians, staff and patients can experience and engage with the technologyfirst hand in order to gain an understanding for themselves of its capabilitiesand limitations.
• 360 video recording insimulation-based teaching sessions
By using virtual reality filming through a360-degree video camera the whole simulated environment is captured. Thefacilitator and participants have access to a recording of the completeenvironment and any activity that otherwise would be missed by fixed cameras.
This allows the teaching to focus moreeffectively on important interactions that may occur in the otherwise unseenspaces of the room.
• PaediatricVR day surgery intervention for anxiety reduction
This project utilises virtual reality and360 video as an educational tool for children and young people to understand,see and virtually interact with the clinical environment before they undergo asurgical procedure, in order to reduce their anxiety.
• PatientVR
The purpose of this project is to displayimmersive 360-degree visual content from the patient perspective. By allowingthe clinician to ‘virtually’ see through the eyes of the patient, anopportunity is provided for reflecting on environments, care, communication andpatient generated triggers. This has a positive impact on the promotion ofnon-technical or human skills required in healthcare. Staff report developingmore awareness of the importance that these ‘soft skills’ have for the patientand for their own professional practice.
Horizon Scanning
Our horizon scanning project explores theopportunities, implications and readiness of the latest or emergingtechnologies and considers their relevance to education and training in healthand care. We consider the likely impact of new technologies and explore whatthe future of technology enhanced learning in healthcare might be like.
We have run workshop activities, bothonline and face to face, including hackathons, to help generate creative ideasabout the future of TEL in healthcare.Our ‘future view personas’ were created by clinicians, industry experts and“healthtech” entrepreneurs to help us envision how healthcare workers might beusing technology to learn in 2021. This foresight activity generates new areasof exploration for the TEL programme; informing investment decision andresearch. Recent projects include piloting the use of artificial intelligence(AI) for digital competency assessment and establishing the Virtual Reality Labto carry out research into the utility of different devices and software forhealthcare education and to grow a ‘VR in Healthcare’ community to spreadlearning.
Pilots and Innovation
Part of future scanning, TEL are working ona number of small-scale projects exploring the benefits of new technologies tosupport education and training in health and care. These small-scale projectswill increase the likelihood and the speed with which HEE and partners are ableto derive benefits from the latest and emerging technologies.
Case Studies: Artificial Intelligence
- We are carrying out an AIexperiment using a tool to assess an individual’s digital capabilities againstthe HEE digital capability framework and then makes recommendations on the mostappropriate resources to support that learner’s need. The learner interactswith a chatbot interface to perform the assessment and an AI-curated list ofresources is presented to the learner in priority order of their learning need.Health and care learners are being introduced to the tool at the moment, andthe study will conclude at the end of December 2018 when the preliminaryresults will be presented.
- We are working with the LeedsInstitute for Medical Education on a second AI experiment that uses naturallanguage processing algorithms to assess the personality types and thinkingstyles of undergraduate medical and nursing students, which it does byanalysing their responses to a trigger photograph (e.g. an image of a sunsetover a beach). This information is then used to provide learning prompts forlearners and to inform tutors about tailoring support mechanisms specificallyto an individual and their learning style, which also concludes at the end ofDecember.
These studies will hopefully provide valuableresearch into the power of AI in education and training.
Summary
Despite the continually evolving landscape and complexity of healthcare training, it is possible to say with certainty that the role of technology will only continue to increase. HEE acknowledge this and that there are huge benefits to the learner and ultimately the patient that can be achieved through leveraging the right technology and related techniques. Such technology enhanced learning approaches will ultimately be able to enhance the country’s capability to deliver the workforce transformation required to meet future healthcare demand. The ultimate purpose is to support the most valuable assets in the delivery of healthcare; its workforce.
About the Authors
Chris Munschis a cardiac surgeon at the Yorkshire Heart Centre in Leeds. He has interestsin surgical training and medical education, in particular simulation andtechnology enhanced learning. He is part of the HEE TEL programme, by providingclinical advice and leadership.
Dr Neil Ralph is the National Programme Lead for TEL at Health Education England; where he also leads on a range of other national programmes. Neil has always had an interest in technology and its impact in healthcare and education. He is also a clinical psychologist with experience of working clinically and in academia.
Originally published in Issue 4, 2018 of MT Magazine.
