By Avinav Nigam
The global shortage of healthcare professionals has become a pressing challenge in recent years, exacerbating the strain on healthcare systems and highlighting the critical need for innovative solutions. Addressing this shortage is crucial for maintaining the quality of healthcare services and ensuring the wellbeing of populations. Particularly in the UK, the NHS, social and health care workers are struggling. There needs to be more staff for the amount of patients and individuals needing support.
“There are over 150,000 vacancies in NHS England alone, with a similar number in social care. This is set to get worse over coming years because of changing demographics” – Lord David Prior, Ex Chair of NHS England.
Governments and technology companies must collaborate effectively if we want to realise the potential of ethical migration to address the growing talent shortages across both health and social care roles, including doctors, nurses, carers, and allied health professionals.
This partnership is vital to ensure that we harness technological advancements, whilst also creating flexible and sensible migration policies to facilitate improved global talent mobility. This will involve resolving administrative issues around visas and documentation, providing training and upskilling opportunities, as well as ensuring the effective integration of migrant healthcare professionals into new environments. This holistic approach gives hope that there is a sustainable solution to the biggest problem in health and social care. Staffing.
The aim of the collaboration is to fill the immediate gaps in healthcare staffing and aspire to build more resilient and inclusive healthcare systems that are prepared to meet future challenges. Technology will help by advancing and speeding up processes, making recruitment and onboarding, as well as relocating key staff much smoother.
Through resourceful technology solutions and strategic policy-making, these efforts exemplify a forward-thinking approach to tackling one of the most significant challenges of our time – ensuring that every individual has access to quality healthcare services.
In short, the solution is ethical recruitment supported by technology and good policy.
Four out of five vacant NHS vacancies are covered by agency staff in nursing, and the figure is seven out of eight for doctors; with the cost running into billions of pounds this is clearly not sustainable economically. These partnerships mean we can ethically work on creating a digital credential recognition system that simplifies the verification of qualifications for migrant healthcare workers. This reduces the barriers to entry for skilled migrants and speeds up their integration into the health and social care workforce. Blockchain technology, in particular, is being explored for its potential to securely and efficiently manage credential verification. Enabling a quicker and smoother process to recruit migrants into the NHS, health and social care roles will ease the economic burden of agency staff and staff shortages.
Additionally, by leveraging AI and big data, technology companies are helping governments predict migration trends and prepare for future flows. This predictive capability can inform policy decisions, humanitarian assistance, and resource allocation, ensuring a more proactive and strategic approach to migration management.
Evidently, with recruiting from overseas comes the issue of skills disparity. To address healthcare systems’ specific skill needs, some tech companies offer digital platforms for training and upskilling migrant healthcare workers. These platforms provide accessible education in various languages and are tailored to meet the regulatory and cultural needs of the healthcare sector in the UK. Such initiatives ensure that migrants can quickly become influential members of the healthcare workforce.
Beyond just filling job vacancies, successful integration into the health and social care sectors requires support networks. Technology companies are developing apps and platforms that offer language training, cultural orientation, and professional networking opportunities for migrant healthcare workers. These tools aim to ease the transition and support the wellbeing and professional development of migrants in their new environments.
Lord Prior, the former chairman of NHS England, explains that one of the causes of 100,000’s of vacancies in the UK is we have not paid sufficient attention to the workforce needed to run a modern Healthcare System. So, what would governmental collaboration with tech companies do for this? Data analytics and AI tools provided by technology companies can assist governments in understanding the gaps and needs within their healthcare systems such as workforce management. This data-driven approach supports more informed policy development and strategic planning, ensuring that efforts to attract migrant healthcare professionals are aligned with actual needs.
Some governments are entering into PPPs specifically to address shortages in healthcare staffing. These partnerships often focus on creating comprehensive programmes that not only recruit healthcare professionals but also support their long-term retention and integration into the healthcare system.
The partnership between governments and technology companies leverages ethical migration, technological advancements, and flexible migration policies as a holistic strategy to mitigate the healthcare workforce crisis. By facilitating global talent mobility, enhancing the recognition of foreign credentials, and providing training and upskilling opportunities, this approach aims to fill the immediate vacancies and bolster the resilience and inclusivity of healthcare systems for future challenges.
As individuals, we can play a role in supporting these initiatives and contributing to the solution. Staying informed about the challenges and solutions in healthcare staffing, advocating for policies that support ethical migration, and increasing the integration of healthcare professionals while supporting organisations and technology platforms that facilitate these transitions are ways to make a difference.
Engaging in community efforts to welcome and integrate healthcare professionals into new environments can also have a profound impact. By lending our voice, time, or resources, we can be part of a collective effort to stop healthcare systems from failing.
About the Author
Avinav Nigam is the Founder and CEO of TERN. He previously was senior executive or founder of leading global technology companies such as IMMO ($1.5Bn in UK/EU real estate), Cars24 ($3Bn+ market cap in Asia & Australia), Disney+ (100m+ users), and PayU ($100Bn+ payment volumes) as well as leading Ariel’s Asia business at Procter & Gamble. He serves as an Advisor to the National Skills Council, Ministry of Skills Development (Govt of India). He’s an active investor in fast growing healthcare and education businesses.
About TERN Group
TERN, inspired by the Arctic Tern’s incredible migratory journey, is on a mission to address the workforce shortages in Europe and beyond, by creating ethical and legal talent pathways. They are the world’s first full-stack upskilling, global migration, and placement platform for skilled talent. TERN’s platform makes it easy for people to upskill for their dream job, migrate to the country of their choice, and be recruited in a top role.
To learn more about TERN Group, visit www.tern-group.com.
