How the Portuguese healthcare sector is upskilling its workforce to provide better care using Microsoft Teams and Power Platform

“Every time I visit one of our regional centers, I’m inundated by requests to have more training and skilling programs. Everyone wants to know when the next one is happening.”

Nuno Vultos, IT Manager at the Lisbon and Vale do Tejo Regional Health Administration, is describing the digital skilling initiative that his organization is undertaking and the widespread success it’s already enjoying.

One of the two largest regional administrations for primary care in Portugal, the organization is at the head of 15 primary care clusters, helping them to deliver better care and improve patient outcomes. 

“Every day, our doctors and nurses work tirelessly to make sure that people receive the best care possible,” says Vultos. “It’s our duty as regional Administration to support and empower them however we can.” 

That, he says, starts with skilling. Over the past few years, the organization has become one of four national healthcare entities to launch a digital skilling initiative to improve digital literacy within its workforce. All with support from Microsoft.

“We employ nearly 11,000 people among doctors, nurses, and staff from our headquarters, serving some four million citizens in our region,” he says. 

“Not all of them are as tech-savvy as we need them to be. Together with Microsoft, we’re finally changing that narrative – giving them more confidence with their digital skills.” 

New requirements call for change

Much like the rest of Europe, the Portuguese healthcare sector is only just recovering from an extremely challenging few years. 

From remote consultations to in-person drop-in meetings, the pandemic heavily transformed operations at the nation’s four leading health organizations: Vultos’ administration; the Regional Health Administration for the North; hospitals Centro Hospitalar Universitário Lisboa Central and Centro Hospitalar Universitário de Coimbra. 

Yet according to Carlos Ribeiro, CIO Regional Health Administration for North Ministry of Health Region, this tough period has brought not only challenges, but also opportunities. 

“When lockdowns started, we found ourselves having to reorganize the way we worked, talked among each other, and supported our patients,” he says. “This led us to implement more technology and collaboration tools to support our day-to-day activities.”

Echoing his words, the other organizations say that technology adoption has skyrocketed in the months of the pandemic, with tools such as Microsoft Teams, OneNote and Forms taking center stage. 

“I’m a huge fan of Microsoft Teams,” says Joao Gomes, IT Lead at Centro Hospitalar Universitário de Coimbra.  “Since 2020, these apps have been making my personal and professional life so much better – allowing our hospital to run Teams-based consultations, talk to our patients from anywhere, and write them prescriptions and schedule appointments remotely.”

But it also brought fresh new issues. “All of a sudden, we had to roll out smartphones and laptops to all our doctors, nurses and clinicians, so they could work wherever they needed in the most agile way,” explains Nuno Vultos. “But not all of them knew how to make the most of tools like Teams.

“An upskilling program was critically needed. That’s when Microsoft came into the picture.”

A program designed to meet the needs of healthcare professionals

Backed by the Portuguese Ministry of Health, the four skilling programs were deployed separately across each healthcare system in early 2022.  

All of them focused on getting staff comfortable both with Microsoft products – such as Teams, Power Platform, Forms, OneNote and Power BI – and broader topics such as cybersecurity and live events.

Carried out in collaboration with Microsoft Partner - Unipartner, the sessions were an immediate success across all four organizations. Lisbon Hospital saw over 1,200 people sign up for at least one course in the first three months, while the Lisbon and Vale do Tejo Regional Health Administration got nearly 40% attendance from the organizations.

“The digital skilling initiative was an amazing experience for us,” says the latter’s Nuno Vultos. “Our organization had seen nothing like it before. Everyone was surprised with the amount of useful information taught but also the variety of topics available.” 

 The organizations worked hard to accommodate the challenging schedules of health workers. “We have thousands of people working on the frontline each day, which makes it hard for them to find 30 minutes or an hour to spend on digital skilling,” says Coimbra Hospital’s Joao Gomes. 

“So, we tried to make sessions at different times of the day to make sure that everyone had a chance to participate. In the end, we had more than 4,000 attendees.”

From greater cyber-education to healthcare professionals empowerment

Even more than attendance numbers, it is the practical use cases provided by the attendees that truly showcase the success of the initiatives. 

“Our people are now much more comfortable using Teams, and they’ve started to use it in their local centers, creating channels that include nurses, doctors, IT staff and more,” says Nuno Vultos. “This is one of Teams’ most welcomed benefits for them. 

“The pandemic may have forced them to work from remote, but at least they had this platform to still talk to each other, cooperate, share schedules and discuss issues.” 

The same applies to clinicians’ everyday work, which he says is now improved thanks to Microsoft’s co-working solutions and the skilling program. 

“Some of the doctors at our local clinics are very grateful for the solution and the newly enhanced familiarity they have with it,” he continues. “They now have a much more structured approach to scheduling consultations, stay on top of their patients’ progress and organize their time.”

According to Carlos Ribeiro, cybersecurity was another highly welcomed introduction. “Even prior to the pandemic, our organization was faced with an increasing number of cyberattacks, often driven by low user literacy,” he says. 

“Thanks to these initiatives, the general maturity level amongst our professionals is much higher.”

Shifting the mindset to transform Portuguese healthcare

As they plan to expand the number of sessions available – while also adding new Microsoft tools – all four institutions hope these initiatives reach even more people. 

Particular interest is being shown towards Microsoft Viva Learning, which the organizations are planning to introduce as a means to provide tailored skilling programs that better fit the needs of the various professionals – and therefore avoid burdening them with sessions on solutions that they don’t need.

This, says Joao Gomes, will also hopefully help to drive even more attention towards the project. “The initiative has been welcomed by many in our organization, yet some people still feel uncertain about collaborative tools,” he adds. 

“They’ve been working the same way for 30 years and don’t understand how changing can help them work better. In 2023, we’re going to increase our efforts to change their mindset and persuade them to use these solutions more.” 

This is something Nuno Vultos has already started to see. “Demand for more classes is on the rise amongst our staff – even those that you would least expect it from,” he says. “In the coming months, we want to continue our courses to reflect the evolution and updates of the tools themselves.”

Ultimately, Carlos Ribeiro says, the goal is to ensure people find growing confidence in the tools and put them at the heart of their work. 

“Technologies are crucial tools that allow us to pursue our goal of better serving patients, especially information and communication technologies,” he says. 

“With Microsoft’s help, we plan on building on these technologies so they can empower our people more and more in the years to come.”