We already know what goes wrong in maternity care. This is how we learn from it.
Every serious maternity investigation ends the same way: with recommendations that never quite reach the frontline clinicians. Upskill exists to close that gap — translating what the system already knows into training that frontline clinicians can learn from.
The system keeps failing in the same ways.
Repeated inquiries and annual MNSI investigations tell a consistent story. The same themes — escalation, monitoring, listening to women — recur, trust after trust, year after year. The knowledge of what goes wrong exists. What's missing is a way for the workforce to learn from it, and break the cycle of repeating preventable harm.
That's why Upskill exists. To close that gap, we're building training that directly translates investigation findings and women's own lived experience into accessible training for frontline clinicians.
of maternal deaths could have been prevented with better clinical care
An NHS where no woman or baby suffers preventable harm.
A maternity service that is safe by design — where high-quality care and the right structures are in place to prevent harm before it happens, not simply respond to it once it has.
To build a maternity system that learns from its mistakes.
So every mother gets the right care, at the right time, from the right people, with the right training — within a system that constantly improves and learns from what goes wrong.
We arepatient-centred
Every case study is based on a real woman or baby who suffered real harm.We handle those stories with respect and care — never as data to be exploited, and never losing sight of the person at the centre of them.
We aredata-driven
We use real-world safety data to decide what clinicians most need to learn — closing the exact gaps that investigations keep exposing.And we draw on the evidence about how clinicians actually learn to shape how we teach it.
We arefor the NHS
Designed by NHS clinicians, for NHS clinicians.
Upskill is committed to enabling safer maternity care across the NHS. As clinicians ourselves, we get what needs to change — we're not just a tech company looking in from the outside.
Dr Andrew Darby-Smith
Andrew is an NHS anaesthetist working in maternity services, and an air-ambulance doctor responding to the most critical 999 calls (which sadly also involve maternity and neonatal emergencies). Across both his roles, he's seen how risk can compound for mothers and babies in a way that means, despite hardworking NHS clinicians doing their best, mistakes are repeated and things continue to go wrong.
But with over a decade of experience in medical education, he sees a better way to drive learning across the whole system. That's why he founded Upskill.
Upskill is founder-led by design — built by NHS clinicians, for NHS clinicians.
Mothers and babies are still experiencing preventable harm. They deserve an NHS that learns faster.
Work with us to turn real maternity safety investigations into effective training and safer NHS maternity care.
