True story: NHS entrepreneurs are revolutionising staffing checks

Dr Manreet Nijjar and Dr Henry Goodier, Co-founders, Truu

Millions of pounds will be saved and hundreds of thousands of NHS clinical and admin days reclaimed with digital staff passports, allowing healthcare workers to move quickly between hospitals. This is the prediction of Dr Manreet Nijjar, NHS Infectious Diseases Consultant and co-founder of Truu.

Currently, staff who change NHS trusts must go through a red-tape rigmarole costing precious time and money. Healthcare staff can spend days organising the necessary onboarding and identity documentation to have them checked and verified at a new hospital. For a junior doctor, these checks can be every six months as they rotate through training jobs.

Across the NHS this means more than 100,000 lost clinical days per year – affecting patient care, and exacerbated by the need to hire locums to cover doctors completing onboarding checks at new hospitals. 

But there is an alternative. Clinicians will be able to use the Truu digital staff passport – which collates and enables remote verification of all their relevant qualifications, registrations and other necessary paperwork – reducing the process to minutes.

Developed by clinicians for clinicians

Truu’s platform founders – two NHS doctors – believe it will become a time- and money-saving tool for all NHS and private healthcare staff and organisations.

Dr Nijjar pioneered the Truu Digital Staff Passport and has been on the NHS frontline in the fight against Covid-19, leading the response at Whipps Cross Hospital in north east London.

His co-founder Dr Henry Goodier is an NHS junior doctor. They were inspired to create the digital staff passport after their own experiences within the health service and their desire to deliver better patient care.

“We have been collaborating with the NHS for several years piloting the platform, to help deliver meaningful change for our colleagues,” says Dr Goodier. “We are delighted that the General Medical Council has been working with us to understand how its processes can be streamlined. We have also been collaborating with other organisations in the UK and internationally across public and private healthcare.

“Our team has been working with clinicians and HR departments to create a platform that is user-friendly as well as supporting management objectives. It will save time and money and allow medical staff to move effortlessly between hospitals so they can spend more time with patients.

Millions of pounds and thousands of days wasted on repetitive checks

“For junior doctors alone, over 100,000 clinical days are lost each year due to mandated onboarding checks. The Truu platform will also address the concerning problem of fake qualifications and fraud in the healthcare industry.

“The experiences of myself and Manny led us to the idea of putting the individual in control of their authentic data and enable its remote verification. The possibilities are endless but in the short term the goal is to reduce the friction required to move between hospitals or begin locum work.”

“The NHS Chief People Officer announced that all NHS staff will have digital staff passports, following our successful pilots, and the recent NHS COVID Digital Staff Passport beta,” adds Dr Nijjar. “We are proud to be part of the team that has been making this happen.”

To find out about Truu’s beta testing or investing, visit www.truu.id