Empowering NHS digital leaders with the Topol Digital Fellowship

Bridging digital transformation ambition and reality in the NHS 

Digital transformation in the NHS can significantly improve care quality, patient outcomes, efficiency, and sustainability across the UK’s healthcare system. However, support and investment is needed to realise the potential of emerging technologies and new ways of working.

The Topol Digital Fellowship programme provides Fellows with the time, space, and support they need for digital transformation projects across the health system. 

Every year, a new cohort navigates demanding roles and the complexities of delivering health and care. These individuals are not merely adapting to change; they are at the forefront of leading it.

As delivery partners, our challenge is to create learning experiences that connect ambitious digital projects with practical methods and the experience needed to make progress. Many Fellows arrive with strong tech aspirations, AI tools, smarter triage systems, and data solutions, but lack structured support in user-centred approaches.

Equipping NHS professionals to lead digital change

Beginning work in 2019, we have designed and delivered a programme of interactive workshops for the Topol Fellows that:

• builds skills in impact measurement, research and discovery, user insights, hypothesis framing and testing

• develops confidence with agile, iterative delivery and scaling approaches

• strengthens peer learning and reflective practice through collaborative learning pods and 1:1 coaching

Sessions are structured around each Fellow bringing their own health and social care challenges, giving them the space to reflect, share, and develop new approaches and thinking. 

We work closely with the NHS team to ensure learning content is aligned with broader programme aims, while ensuring each session creates room for Fellows to pause and reconnect with the people at the heart of digital change: service users and staff. As well as in-person learning, we use collaboration tools such as NHS Futures and Miro, and Fellows continue conversations through WhatsApp groups and informal meetups.

Discovery as a learning mindset

Throughout the programme, Fellows are practically supported to build skills in framing hypotheses, planning research, conducting user interviews, and synthesising findings, and prototyping. We also explore integrating emerging tools, including AI, to support ideation and iteration, while they delve deeper into this in their parallel course with Guys and St Thomas' NHS Trust. 

As projects in each cohort grow in scale, Fellows move from prototyping into delivery, navigating governance, planning for risk, and embedding evaluation.

Workshops in the programme are more than just technical skills sessions. They’re moments of reflection and community, opportunities for busy professionals to step back, share experiences, and reconnect with their purpose. 

Many Fellows arrive with a strong interest in digital technology's potential, with exciting and vast opportunities. However, one of the most impactful shifts we see throughout the Fellowship is when participants begin to ask, “Who are we designing this for?” This is where problems Fellows bring to the programme, often with solutions in mind, might be structural, about communication, or assumptions they didn’t realise they were making.

Sessions create the space for Fellows to step away from technical solutions. In this way, each cohort experiences the power of meaningful discovery work. 

Not just learning, leading

The Fellows in each cohort are not new to healthcare or transformation. They are senior clinicians, managers, analysts, and professionals carving out time to develop, reflect, and lead change in their contexts. It’s not always easy, but it is essential. Therefore, our role has been to support them, recognising that change doesn’t happen in isolation – it happens through shared learning, courageous conversations, and systems thinking. And if a Fellow leaves a session and asks their team, “Have we really spoken to the people this is for?” then we know we’re moving in the right direction.

Delivering impact with over 100 Fellows through user centred innovation

Leading and iterating cohorts of the Topol Digital Fellowship over six years, we have supported over 100 Fellows to graduate from the programme. Fellows have developed practical skills in user research, prototyping, and framing questions that guide delivery, not just in theory, but through hands-on work across the health system. 

As a programme, this investment has demonstrated how user-centred design can help teams avoid investing time and money in solving the wrong problem, or integrating technology solutions in ways that don’t best meet user needs.

Across 1:1 coaching, group discussions, and project work, there has also been consistent feedback from Fellows about how the programme has challenged their ways of working and approaches to digital transformation. 

Interested in running an internal academy to help build capability in your organisation? Read more about how we can help or contact our Head of Learning Design Tash Willcocks