AXIA digital

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Axia presents at a major Assessment conference

This weekend (August 26th to 28th) a major international assessment conference will be taking place concurrently in Ottawa and Lyon. The theme of the conference is ‘Reimagining Assessment Across the Continuum’ and focuses predominantly on solutions for the health sector. The title of Axia’s oral presentation will be on the theme of the ‘The Use of Skills Passports/Mini-Credentials for Assessment and Planning’.

The presentation will demonstrate the diverse groups, for whom we have developed Passports in collaboration with different health bodies and suppliers to meet specific challenges.

The Critical Care Skills Passport was a collaboration with Health Education England to support professionals working in and reallocated to Intensive Care Wards, in the response to the Covid waves, to demonstrate their skills for that setting and have these assessed. The passport was developed in less than a month and has now been rolled out nationally and was short-listed for a National Nursing Award. A video that describes the implementation and adoption of the passport is available below.

The Microsurgery Skills Passport is a collaboration with the Innovation team at the University Hospitals in Coventry and Warwickshire, UK and has been designed to enable Microsurgeons demonstrate their skills by uploading videos of their work and setting this against a competency framework.

The TVLC Wound Care Passport was developed with the support of Urgo Medical and Professor Karen Ousey and Leanne Atkin of Huddersfield University and it enables nurses and other health professionals progressively demonstrate their skills in wound care.

In development is also a passport for the Saudi which is a partnership project with the Nursing and Midwifery Faculty of the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland. The passport is available in English and Arabic.

Chris Peat the Chair of the company who is making the presentation comments that, ‘Skills Passports and Mini Credentials have long been recognised as an important assessment tool. For the individual health professional, they can demonstrate the specific advanced skills they have developed post qualification. From an organisational perspective it enables them to ensure that they have the right skills mix in their organisation so that they can respond to workforce challenges. Presenting the passports digitally is a major contributor to their widespread adoption.’


The key benefits of the Skills Passports developed by Axia Digital.

  • Fully mobile enabled.
  • Reflect fully the content of the existing assessment for a credential.
  • A passport can be delivered quickly if required using a tried and tested technical architecture.
  • The passports are highly intuitive and do not require training to use.
  • Contribute to workforce planning by enabling individuals to demonstrate the specific skills they have and have these assessed.
  • Enable a passport to be presented in different languages

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Providing further support to frontline NHS staff

On Monday 11th January we were approached by the London Transformation and Learning Collaborative to develop a Skills Passport for staff working in Intensive Care Units working in London. This morning just two weeks later the tool has been made live to those staff. Jane Fish, the project manager explains the purpose of the project.

‘This work led by Clare Leon Villapalos, (Imperial College Health Care Trust) in partnership with stakeholders across London, on the CC Skills Passport for RSC and NRSS roles will make an important contribution to preparing and supporting staff redeployed during surge to ICU and Covid clinical areas.

Our thanks to Axia Digital for the pace at which they worked to move the passport to a digital platform and to the many stakeholders who tested the passport.’

Providing the Skills Passport on a digital platform will enhance its accessibility for both Registered Support Clinician (RSC) and Non Registered Support Staff (NRSS) users as well as for the staff working in the environments where staff members have been redeployed.’

This project was commissioned during one of the busiest months for the company, however, we saw that there was an urgent requirement, and we knew that our technology was created to respond to this sort of challenge. Richard Etheridge our Technical and Operations Director comments,

‘The team grasped with both hands the opportunity to demonstrate the capability of our core platform to develop user-friendly and robust sites at pace. We were also able to use the knowledge gained from developing Skills Passports for other Health workers. There is growing interest in our capability to provide solutions that help new skills be quickly developed and recognised.’

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Happy Christmas and New Year to all our customers and supporters.

This has been an exciting year for the company. It seems strange to write this when this has been a challenging and strange year. For many of our customers, especially those working in the Health sector, we know how difficult this year has been. There is an earlier story on this site, of how we have used the flexibility of our technology to support them and this continues.

Nevertheless, this has been a year where we have had the opportunity to work on many major projects. In September, all trainee Dentists in England, Wales and Northern Ireland were switched from the two previous e-portfolio systems to the integrated e-portfolio we provide. It was pleasure to hear at a recent meeting how well the new system has been received.

We have worked with the Royal Pharmaceutical Society to provide a range of assessment pathways for Pharmacists at all levels in the profession. Again, it has been great to hear the positive reception to our work.

Another positive development this year has been the fact that many of our long-standing customers have strengthened their commitment to the company, both through extending their contracts and committing to new work. The creation of Axia Digital (Ireland) has also opened up new opportunities in this important market for us.

We are therefore looking forward to 2021 and know that the team will be coming back in January to a full programme of work.

As they reflect on the past year, joint owners Richard Etheridge and Chris Peat wanted to express their thanks to our customers and colleagues.

‘We are grateful to all our customers who have again proved to be great collaborators in meeting our objective, to produce sites that provide a high-quality experience to all their users. This year they have stretched and prompted us to produce some of our very best work. This work though can only be produced through the efforts of our highly talented team, to whom we offer our thanks, for the way they have adjusted to working from home and for their commitment to the company.’

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Helping our customers meet the challenges posed by Covid 19

A significant proportion of the company’s business is in the health sector and therefore it will be not be a surprise that we have actively been supporting many of our customers meet the challenges presented by Covid 19.

The configurability of our software has meant we have been able to make rapid changes to our sites even for some of our newest customers.

Last year Health Education England selected the company to create an e-portfolio for Dentists involved on post qualification training programmes across England and Wales. The site is now built and been well received, prior to being used in earnest by trainees from September.

However due to Covid 19 the training programmes of last year’s graduates have been disrupted because of the closure of Dental practices and the programme for the new graduates has had to been altered to reflect the fact that they will also have reduced access to practice.

The Axia Digital team has had to work rapidly both to adapt the existing practice assessments and to provide additional assessments for this year’s student. All this has been achieved on time whilst still retaining all the features of the existing programme, for when full access to practice becomes available.

The development of the e-portfolio for the Royal Pharmaceutical Society also posed a similar challenge. The RPS working in conjunction with Health Education England, had to quickly to adapt their Foundation programme to create a Provisional Foundation Programme which reflects the challenges faced by new Pharmacists, entering a highly demanding working environment.

Working closely with the team at the RPS the portfolio to support the programme was developed in five weeks and has already been soft launched. The team is now moving on to expand the e-portfolio so that it can be used by Pharmacists working at Consultant Practice level.

Alongside this work we have made quick changes to many of the Practice Assessment portfolios we provide to Nursing courses in response to the changing patterns of placements as a result of the demands on hospitals due to Covid 19.

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Axia Digital and CORONAVIRUS / COVID-19

CORONAVIRUS – Update

Axia Digital, like most companies, has been following government advice in relation to the uncertainty regarding the CORONAVIRUS / COVID-19.  We have been planning for several weeks, following the new advice last night from the Prime Minister, we have decided to move our team from working in our office environment to working from home.  This was put into effect this morning and hopefully, you will have found that if you have contacted us, it has been business as normal.

Our business continuity plan has been implemented which allows the business to continue in times such as these and has the full support of the company’s board.  The team have all been working as they normally do, only remotely.  We have a series of tools and processes that we use to manage our work and these are either virtual or easily virtualised.  Our aim is to maintain the levels of customer service we normally provide and aim to exceed it if we can.

Our suppliers are implementing similar plans and are keeping us up-to-date with their plans as they are implemented.  We do not anticipate any unplanned interruptions in the services we provide and we will continue to work on support issues and any development you have asked us to undertake or are in the process of asking us to undertake.

Simply put we expect business as usual.

While the news and information surrounding the COVID-19 coronavirus continue to evolve, we are working diligently to stay informed and take all the necessary safeguards to ensure the health and safety of our employees, partners and customers.  As such, we are following the guidance of government authorities and world health professionals in ensuring our decisions are in line with their recommendations and that we are minimising any risk to our team.  We have suspended all non-essential business travel with immediate effect.

Initially, our phones will divert to an answer machine with messages being sent to the team immediately.  We will respond to voice calls as soon as possible.  Please continue to contact us in the normal ways that you have done previously.

Please continue to send support to support@axiainteractive.net

We hope that all our customers remain safe and look forward to working with you over the coming weeks.

Kind regards
Richard and Chris

Our unique offer lies in our ability to deliver to our customers exactly what they require. We do not have products but instead a platform which we can use to mirror our customer processes. None of our customers need to change what they do to fit into our system, our system is flexible enough to reflect what they currently do and enhance the user’s experience.

Since 1997 AXIA Digital has been helping organisations capture and assess skills and competencies that are demonstrated in a professional setting or in the workplace. We create leading edge digital solutions, which mirror and then enhance existing assessment systems. Our solutions are all individually hand crafted but are deployed on the same platform.

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