10.0 Next steps

Read the next steps for after this review.

The report captures the current status of technology and digitally enabled learning in health and care education. It represents a snapshot of where we are now but cannot ignore the fact that future technological advances will inevitably have a major impact on the way we approach health and care education. Artificial Intelligence and the Semantic Web (Web 3.0), the Metaverse, 6G connectivity and even Quantum Computing are all just around the corner and offer enormous opportunities as well as significant challenges. Failure to recognise, respond and adapt to these advances would be disastrous, and education providers and learners will need to be proactive in engaging with them. We cannot afford to wait for another pandemic to stimulate a rush to technological solutions – we need to control the agenda.

In this respect we also need to recognise that new pedagogies will be needed to meet these technological advances. It is important to recognise that there is not one ‘true’ underlying educational theory that will deliver the future of health and care education, but it is also important to recognise that learners will increasingly adopt different ways to meet their learning needs. Institutions and educators must be prepared for these changes and be able to respond to the demands of the learners as well as the demands of the technology.

We therefore recommended that further research considers the experiences and opinions of members of professional groups/regulatory bodies in greater depth. Additionally, further research may consider engaging with students using qualitative research methods to better understand their experiences.

There is also a need for further research into the experiences of those professions which were underrepresented in this report such as dentistry, creative arts therapies, anaesthesia associates, prosthetics and orthotics and social work (all groups had less than 10 responses).

Future projects might consider researching a single group at a time to get a more in-depth understanding of their experience. The breadth of this report limited the detail that could be provided on a profession specific level or on a regional level. There is also scope for considering how regional differences in socioeconomic conditions might impact the use and perception of digital technologies.

Finally, there is a need for comprehensive research into the language surrounding digital technologies. This may later inform more universal definitions of terminology, which will benefit research and initiatives in this field more widely.