NHSX has launched a new position to recruit a digital midwife to support its strategy at a regional and national level.
It’s aimed at a registered midwife with data management and informatics skills, to support health and care services to improve the outcomes for pregnant women and address health inequalities.
The national digital midwife is being recruited to provide leadership, coordination, facilitation, evaluation and improvement across the digital maternity work streams.
The role will support the design and implementation of national digital programmes, oversee the tracking of progress against digital transformation plans and develop a networked approach to enable digital transformation. They will also play a part in supporting NHSX to achieve its five missions, which include reducing the burden on staff, giving people the tools they need to access information, ensuring safety and improving productivity.
On Twitter the response was extremely supportive and positive. Dr Natasha Phillips, the Chief Nursing Information Officer at NHSX, said:
@TeamCMidO & I are delighted to be jointly recruiting an experienced senior midwife, passionate about transforming maternity care with digital technologies, to work across our teams https://t.co/7a3X4NpHdu @MidwivesRCM @NetworkShuri @NHSX @WeNurses @WeMidwives please share widely
— Dr Natasha Phillips RN (@NatashaRoseP) March 22, 2021
NHSX has recently taken over the digital maternity work stream from NHS Digital. Up until July 2020, NHS Digital were delivering four main projects including; interoperable maternity records, women’s digital care records, digital maturity and a digital tool set to help offer trusted and reliable sources of maternity information for women.
Last week HTN reported on the news that the Royal College of Midwives has launched a call for a digital midwife to be in place in every maternity service in the next 12 months. The trade union, which represents the majority of practising midwives, called for a digital midwife to lead on digital transformation programmes and ensure systems that are introduced are interoperable.
Recently on a HTN LinkedIn poll, we asked our network if their organisation had a digital midwife in place; 57% of respondents said their organisation did.
Commercial suppliers are also moving in a similar direction, Wellbeing Software being one, who recently has hired a digital midwife.
