Introduction
The British Computer Society (BCS), The Chartered Institute for IT, has a long and distinguished history since it was established in 1957 with a membership over 60 000 across 150 countries.1 The royal charter made the BCS a charity ‘responsible for raising the standards of IT education, professionalism, ethics and practice' while ‘making IT good for society’. Built on five pillars of: (1) sharing expertise, (2) improving education, (3) influencing practice, (4) driving standards and (5) supporting careers, its membership is now drawn from professions as diverse as the technologies which underpin society including health and social care.2
During the COVID-19 pandemic, BCS ran a campaign to celebrate IT professionals as ‘vITal workers’ keeping society connected and informed.3 Efforts to manage COVID-19 outbreaks relied on advanced coordinated technologies; the health data scientists and bioinformaticians used digital analytics tools; ordinary citizens relied on digital tools and connectivity for work and education and the health and social care professionals transformed their practice while honing their digital literacy to continue and offer optimal (digital) healthcare services.4
The Topol Review, published in 2019, focused on ‘preparing the healthcare workforce to deliver the digital future’.5 Building a digitally ready workforce (BDRW) has been an ongoing strategy for the National Health Services (NHS) across the devolved home nations of the UK (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales) and increasingly considered for social and care workers too. The review proposed three principles: (1) that patients should be partners in decisions about their health aided by health technologies; (2) that the healthcare workforce needs expertise and guidance to evaluate new technologies and (3) that adoption of new technologies should give health and care professionals ‘the gift of time to care’.5 Three technologies were specifically mentioned: (1) artificial intelligence (AI); (2) genomics and (3) digital medicine . The review emphasised the importance of a digitally competent health and social care workforce which understands data-driven technologies and is ‘digitally confident, digitally aware and digitally literate’. It described new disciplines that were likely to emerge such as higher specialist scientists, knowledge management, AI and robotics engineering, digital health technicians, bioinformaticians and digital technologists.5
In anticipation of, and catering for, the learning needs of an emerging workforce, the BCS planned an internal audit to articulate the provision and needs of current members who work in the health and social care arena. The main objective was to identify appropriate learning scaffolding frameworks and provision of ‘in house’ continuing professional development (CPD) content, which fit the lifelong learning ethos. However, it became clear at an early stage that the organisation does not have, nor is it set to retrospectively collect, data on professional roles or sectors of its membership. It is, therefore, unaware which of their members identify as health and social care professionals. These data are critical in understanding professional learning needs and how to address them.
A 2020 scoping review of 1.5 million registrants identified 32 healthcare professional job titles in the UK.6 Each associated with one of the nine regulatory bodies each of which has a different length of CPD cycle (General Optical Council refers to continuing education and training (CET) rather than CPD) ranging from 1 year to 5 years.6
An earlier 2019 report, prepared by ‘The Interprofessional CPD and Lifelong Learning UK Working Group’, identified five principles for CPD and lifelong learning for the health and social care sector.7 Principle 1 stated that it would be each person’s responsibility and be made possible and supported by their employer; principle 2 stated that it would benefit service users; principle 3 stated that it would improve the quality of service delivery; principle 4 stated that it would be balanced and relevant and finally, principle 5 stated that it would be recorded and show the effect on each person’s area of practice. However, little is included regarding digital (n=0) or informatics (n=0) or technology (n=2) but it calls on professional bodies and trade unions, employers and ‘the wider system’ to promote CPD to improve the quality of service delivery.7
In contrast, a most recent commissioned report published in The Lancet considered the future of health and care service post-COVID-19, although 64 pages in length, featured many of these key terms numerous times: digital (n=74), informatics (n=0), technology (n=86) and health (n=1539), social (n=251) and care (n=954).8 The report names: Health Education England and the Department of Health and Care; National Health Service Education for Scotland; Health Education and Improvement Wales and Northern Ireland Department of Health responsible for health workforce planning.8
There are key skills and competencies frameworks for health and care9–15 which have started to include variations on technical efficiency, informatics competence or similar. It may still take a leap of faith to compare, combine or critically appraise such frameworks against the BCS SFIAplus V.7, a task which is outwith the scope of this study.16 17 The Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA) which, being generic, may lack alignment given health (n=0), social (n=0) and care (n=0) do not feature in SFIAplus.16 17
Given reports that the health and social care professions account for almost 1 in 10 jobs in the UK18 and in the aftermath of COVID-19 the rapid digitisation of the sector, the BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, needs to act now. BCS has a responsibility to identify and engage those working with digital health or ehealth or technology enabled care or with health informatics interests and recognise the potential for hybrid career paths which may have specialised CPD needs.19
Aim of study
Therefore, the aim of this study was to characterise the health and social care membership of BCS and to determine their CPD needs.