Cohort 4 of the Topol Digital Fellowship launches

On Wednesday 26 April, we were delighted to welcome this year's Topol Digital Fellows to their opening conference, held at the International Convention Centre in Birmingham.

The day began with an opening speech by James Freed, Chief Digital and Information Officer at NHS England and Senior Responsible Owner for the Digital Academy. James spoke to the Fellows about the impact the Fellowship has had on alumni of the programme and how each of them has earnt their place on the Fellowship. The Fellows were introduced to Simeon Kent, Programme Manager for the Fellowship from Wessex Academic Health Science Network. Simeon gave an overview of the day’s agenda and the role he’ll play in supporting each Fellow’s journey over the next 12 months.

Throughout the day, the Fellows attended sessions held by colleagues from TPXImpact and the University of Manchester, who deliver workshops and masterclasses during the Fellowship. Courtney and Laura, from TPXImpact, delivered an overview of agile and design, along with workshops on ‘capturing a baseline and personal objective setting’, ‘introduction to peer coaching’ and an ‘introduction to the tech’. Fran, from the University of Manchester, delivered an overview of the machine learning course that she and her colleagues will deliver throughout the year, as well as showcasing an innovative use of Jupyter notebooks.

For the first time, this cohort is made up of colleagues from clinical, non-clinical and social care backgrounds. The event gave them the chance to meet one another and spend the day networking, discussing their projects and their hopes for the next 12 months.

Topol Digital Fellows are given time, support, and training to lead digital health transformations and innovations in their organisations. The programme is designed to connect Fellows to like-minded peers, digital transformation and digital health and care experts and people who can support and mentor them.

Throughout Cohort 4’s programme, we will be showcasing Fellow’s journeys through blogs, updates and social media activity and we can’t wait to see their projects develop.