AXIA digital

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Skills Passports – Creating a Transferable Workforce

At Axia Digital we are very proud of the work we have done to develop digital passports and this is a continuing area of growth for our company. Skills passports allow staff to demonstrate their core skills effectively and easily against a standardised framework and share this information quickly with fellow professionals and line managers, across their organisation. This enables staff to move across locations without the need for lengthy skills checking and assessment procedures, saving time and money for employers and organisations.

Please read our case study Skills Passports – Creating a Transferable Workforce

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College of Radiographers – CPD Now

Read the College of Radiographers Case Study

Axia Digital and the College of Radiographers (CoR) have been working successfully together since 2004 to support their member CPD. We are proud of our long association with the college and the online CPD planning, recording and evaluation system we developed for them, ‘CPD Now’. This is available to all members of the Society of Radiographers.

Richard Etheridge, Managing Director said:

“The College of Radiographers have been trailblazing the development of online CPD since 2004. It has been a pleasure to work with the team, old and new, we have learnt a lot from them. We are pleased to celebrate the success of our longest standing ePortfolio. Working with the College has helped us to improve our core platform and led to other work around the world, including the Irish Institute of Radiography and Radiation Therapy and the New Zealand Institute of Medical Radiation Technology. It has also informed the development of our site for the Centre of Advancing Practice. The Centre plays a key role in enabling Health Care Professionals in a wide range of areas to have their skills and knowledge recognised.”

CPD Now is a user-friendly ePortfolio website that enables the CoR members to set up and maintain a fully comprehensive record of their ongoing CPD. This ensures that they meet their requirements for the bi-annual CPD Audit of Radiographers which is carried out by The Health and Care Professions Council. Those working as Assistant Practitioners, Mammography Associates, Practice Educators, Advanced or Consultant Practitioners can also use CPD Now to apply for individual accreditation with the College of Radiographers through the College’s portfolio of CoR Accreditation Schemes.

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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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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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The European Centre of Excellence for Research in Continuing Professional Development

The European Centre of Excellence for Research in Continuing Professional Development was launched in Dublin today.

Axia Digital are delighted to have been a member of the steering committee that has laid the groundwork for today’s launch. The creation of the Centre of Excellence is the initiative of Professor Thomas Kearns, the Executive Director of the Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery at the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland. He is also board member of Axia Digital (Ireland).

Today’s launch was attended by academics; practitioners and employer organisations from almost all countries in the European Union and from the USA; Rumania and Albania. Many of the attendees were also there as representatives of European networks for nurses, midwives and other allied Health professionals. The Centre is therefore ideally placed to secure European funding to support its research and pilot projects.

The Centre is based at the RCSI’s Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery and this evening those involved in the launch will be attending the Conference Dinner, which precedes the 39th Annual International Nursing & Midwifery Research and Education conference. One of the guests will be our Customer Services Director Chris Peat who comments;

‘It is a great honour to have been involved in the creation of this important Centre and to continue to be involved over the coming years. It is generally recognised that there is insufficient evidence about CPD and its impact on patient care. We look forward to supporting the Centre, by helping to identify the impact that CPD can have and the role that digital tools can play.’

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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