A Digital Deep Dive into XR Technology: Developing a local training programme to increase awareness of emerging healthcare XR technologies amongst healthcare professionals (Preprint)

Background

Demands on health care services can greatly outweigh capacity. Multifactorial causative factors present great challenges, forcing the National Health Service (NHS) to increase efficiency and adaptivity. Concurrently, digital advancements are excelling and long-term plans for NHS sustainability are focusing on the use of technological interventions to benefit patients. As a result, integration of extended reality (XR) technology has become an important focus of health care research. However, models of how the digital literacy of health care workforces can be developed and how frontline staff can be actively involved in the design and development of creative digital interventions are lacking. Such programs are essential to allow the development and upscaling of digital innovation within the NHS for the benefit of the patients.

Such a program has been developed in the Digital Futures research lab at Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust, representing one of the first immersive digital technologies research spaces embedded within the NHS. A “Digital Deep Dive” training program has been developed, allowing local health care workers to recognize the possibilities of digital health care technologies and supporting them in the evolution of ideas for potential bespoke digital solutions appropriate to their own patient groups and care pathways.

Objective

This paper aims to explain the development of this unique XR Deep Dive program and present the evaluation that informed future directions for its ongoing development.

Methods

The Deep Dive sessions were designed according to relevant pedagogic principles, including experiential, active, and contextual learning theories. Voluntary pilot sessions were held for local clinical teams comprised of junior doctors, consultants, nurses, and allied health professionals. Self-selection sampling was used. Participants completed an anonymous postsession feedback form, which was used to conduct a service evaluation. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics (quantitative) and thematic analysis (qualitative).

Results

In total, 21 completed questionnaires were analyzed. Overall, the sessions were positively received: all participants reported increased awareness of the potential for digital health care innovation postsession and most found it useful and relevant to their clinical careers. Participants valued the sessions being grounded in a context relevant to local practice with opportunities to interact with the technology through the lens of use cases.

Conclusions

We have developed a unique training initiative providing contextually relevant XR technology awareness training for health care professionals locally. Despite the growing pace of digital health care innovation, we recognized a knowledge gap in our local workforce regarding the potential of XR technologies within health care. We responded by developing a training program grounded in the concept of digital co-creation—working with staff and service users to develop bespoke solutions integrated within patient pathways. The results from this paper will help to inform future directions for developing digital awareness training in our trust and have implications for wider NHS digital literacy training.