My Digital Unacademy

  The need With increasing sustainability challenges of rising care needs for chronic conditions in an aging population the need has never been greater for the NHS to harness technology to support new models of care delivery, avoid unwarranted variation by providing better access to information at points of care, and to embed evidence based digital decision support tools to enable population health management (NHS, 2017) ,   (NHS, 2019) . Though these ambitions are firmly supported by the findings, principles, and recommendations highlighted by Professor Robert Wachter (Department of Health and Social Care, 2016) , addressing the challenges relating to financial investment and the need for thoughtful stakeholder engagement are key to ensuring successful digital transformation   (Honeyman, 2016) . Furthermore; there are workforce challenges which arise from the impact digital solutions bring to the roles and functions of clinicians (Topol, 2019) . These challenges and op...

This paper e xamines the challenges that need to be overcome for the relationship between finance staff and clinicians to flourish and critically appraises the techniques that can be used. Challenges that need to be overcome 1.       A strategic disconnect Cost and quality improvement (QI) programmes are often viewed as separate if not competing entities rather than strategies of equal priority and complimentary intent within NHS organisations. The hypothesis that ‘quality improvement reduces costs’ remains debatable, ‘there is some evidence to show that quality improvements can both improve quality and release resources’ (Neath, et al., 2012, p. 1) ; and though some cases are effective and report savings; the evidence is weak (Llewellyn, et al., 2016) . These initiatives carry costs which may exceed savings, and this is complicated by cost-benefits being spread over time and between stakeholders. There are also several contextual factors (e.g. contractual...