Launchpad Company Upskill.Health Launches Bitesize Training Platform To Supercharge The NHS Workforce

DigitalHealth.London Launchpad company Upskill.Health have announced the launch of their bitesize training platform, combining mobile, AI and VR technologies to deliver on-the-job training for busy NHS clinicians.

In this blog, we hear from Upskill.Health founder Dr Andrew Darby-Smith about the pressing need for improvements in clinical training and how the Upskill.Health platform is starting to gain momentum.

Recent national enquiries have concluded that better on-the-job training for NHS staff is essential if we are to provide safe care for our patients^1,2,3.

While 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.

This reality is 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.

However, with the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan⁵ making it clear that we need to train more people, more quickly than we ever have before, this is only going to become a bigger problem and our current approaches to on-the-job training aren’t going to cut it.

Face-to-face training (e.g. clinical simulation) is great but expensive and hard to scale, whilst online learning (e.g. e-learning) is passive, time-consuming and consistently demonstrates poor staff engagement.

But it doesn’t need to be this way. We founded Upskill to harness the power of multiple emerging technologies in a training platform that actually works for busy NHS clinicians.

As NHS clinicians ourselves, we’ve 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 are 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’.

1. Offering a mixture of short-form tutorial carousels and quizzes, our gamified, mobile app provides focused learning, that’s available on-demand.
2. By combining our 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.
3. By co-designing our training with local NHS service users, we’re 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 Doctor and Founder, Upskill.Health

Launched in January 2025, we’re on a mission to supercharge the NHS workforce through better, faster training that’s cost effective at scale.

We’re already working with 3 x NHS trusts to co-design and pilot our 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 >500 x NHS staff across dozens of NHS sites.

To join our waitlist or learn more, visit www.upskill.health, or follow our journey on LinkedIn.

Upskill.Health is part of the seventh cohort of the DigitalHealth.London Launchpad programme.

DigitalHealth.London Launchpad is funded by the UK Government via the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF). It is delivered by the Health Innovation Network (HIN) South London in partnership with the Office of Life Sciences, CW+, Medicity, NHS England and the Mayor of London.

For more information, please visit https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-
shared-prosperity-fund-prospectus.

References:

1. 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
2. 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) 
3. 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)
4. NHS Staff Survey (2023)
5. NHS long term workforce plan. NHS England, London. (2023)
6. Dempster, F.N. Spacing effects and their implications for theory and practice. Educ Psychol Rev 1, 309–330 (1989)
7. Jeffrey D. Karpicke, Janell R. Blunt. Retrieval Practice Produces More Learning than Elaborative Studying with Concept Mapping. Science 331,772-775. (2011)