New developments on the Topol Digital Fellowship programme as Cohort 2 begins

This Fellowship provides time for the Fellows to design and deliver digital health innovation projects within the NHS. Our aim is to support NHS organisations to invest in clinical staff to develop specialist digital skills and to also to support learning in leading digital health transformation. The Topol Digital Health Fellowship offers:

• A series of informative workshops followed by drop-in sessions to support the fellows with their digital projects
• Pastoral support such as 1:1 check-ins throughout the programme
• Masterclass opportunities
• Support from Alumni fellows
• Facilitated support to represent their work and the Fellowship at a variety of conferences and events

We are now 6 months into Cohort 2 and the Fellows are doing extremely well. They have completed the following three workshops so far with our delivery partner Future Gov:

• Workshop 1: Agile delivery and introduction to design-thinking
• Workshop 2: Stakeholder management, impact measurement and theories of change
• Workshop 3: Discovery training (how understand the needs of your service users)

Or first Topol Alumni Masterclass took place in May with our fantastic guest speaker Gary McAllister who is the Chief Technology Officer for London. Gary talked about his experience of innovations in digital health throughout his career. As part of the Masterclass, Gary discussed the future of digital health and its possible evolution with the Topol Fellowship Alumni and current Fellows.

The Topol Fellows and Topol Alumni group are in high demand and have been offered many great speaking opportunities in relation to digital transformation in healthcare. Some recent examples of invited opportunities are:

• Profile spotlight for Health Education England as part of the International Day of Women and Girls in Science (February 2021)
• Panel guest for the Rising Star panel at Digital Health ReWired (March 2021)
• Digital health fellowship development offering SME contribution (May 2021)
• Topol Fellowship Programme speaker (May 2021)
• Speaker at the Artificial Intelligence Summit (May 2021)
• Presenter at the Faculty of Clinical Informatics members webinar (July 2021)
• Panel guest for the career pathways and leadership in digital panel at the Digital Health Summer School (July 2021)

A series of activities evaluating the first two cohorts of the programme are currently taking place and summaries will be published. The evaluations will consider the impact of the of the Topol Digital Fellowship programme on NHS organisations, an equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) review and look at the experiences of the Topol Fellows.

Finally, in the autumn the Fellows will take part in a Machine Learning course. The University of Manchester have developed this bespoke course for the Topol Fellowship and will be delivering it over the second half of the programme. We would like to offer up to 10 additional places on this programme to clinical colleagues across the NHS in England. There will be a short application process via the Topol Digital Fellowship website which will open in July 2021 with a September start date for the course. Please keep an eye on this website for updates as they are available.

If you would like any further information about the Topol Fellowship please visit the Topol Digital Fellowship website or contact the Topol Fellowship programme team.