The Project
- Solutions are not developed in collaboration with the health and social care professionals and not customized to their workflows, culture, and needs. Therefore a multidisciplinary approach needed in the educational process for both working categories.
- Healthcare professionals lack eHealth competencies and abilities, preventing them from optimal use of technology.
- General lack of awareness of the current career opportunities and emerging job roles in the Digital Health and Care sector.
- The emergence of a new type of occupational category: job roles at the interface of humans and technology translating data, knowledge, and information between them. These new types of translational roles are crucial in the development and implementation of digital solutions as part of the digital transformation of the Health and Care sector.
- The increasing importance of distinctly human soft skills. These are skills and capabilities not replicable by technology. Current education and training system do not take these sufficiently enough into account in preparing graduates for future working life.
- The lack of development of common approaches to education, skills development, and career planning. A shared education route would also enable staff to move more flexibly between different roles across the sector.
Research review done by WHO Regional Office in 2016 on evaluating eHealth education in Europe detected key issues that need to be addressed for further regional and national eHealth strategies: the lack of involvement of expert health informaticians in interdisciplinary teaching teams and supporting practical eHealth training through eLearning, simulations and mobile technologies and motivating students and professionals to be comfortable engaging in eHealth.
Most of the European universities do not properly tackle the eHealth Education Programmes shortage. In the eHealth Eurocampus project report, there are only 17 Tertiary Education Programmes that focus on eHealth, but few of them in Low and Middle-Income Countries. The challenge for education and training partners is to be able to provide agile and relevant content, which meets the needs of industry, while also securing a common core of essential knowledge.
The target groups include higher education students from multidisciplinary educational programs, with a common interest in eHealth innovation and impact, and eHealth researchers, teachers, entrepreneurs from partner countries, that are the direct beneficiaries of the project or indirect beneficiaries within partner institutions or external bodies.
Objectives
Context
The main focus of the CONNECT project is on issues of eHealth innovation, state-of-the-art training and education of students necessary on the health market, in the form of a highly-and-systematically organized formal and non-formal educational program to improve knowledge, develop cross-sectoral skills and competences, entrepreneurship and support students’ critical thinking required to improve health care.
The eHealth sector is growing globally at an exponential rate year on year. Thus, the Health and Care sector is no exception from digitalization: the workforce is required to be more agile and flexible to keep up with the accelerating pace of technological advancement.
eHealth is a growing market and a fundamental factor for new healthcare systems. National and European initiatives implicitly demand a higher level of knowledge in the areas of healthcare, engineering, and management. Competency, literacy proficiency, and qualification in usage and development of eHealth solutions are in deficit. These barriers should be overcome by integrating eHealth training for future health professionals into the medical and social health education curriculum and by increasing the number of IT engineers involved and qualified in the production and operation of eHealth systems. There is an increasing demand for informatics human resources engaged in eHealth development. This limitation could be overcome as promoting eHealth innovation, supporting technology adoption, and training interested informaticians to improve their fields’ competency.
Our project addresses actions that promote innovative pedagogies and methods for teaching, learning, and assessment and supports educators and learners to use digital technologies in creative, collaborative, and efficient ways. The development of the eHealth Community of Practice online platform and an eHealth Interdisciplinary Curriculum will upskill students with new and open access to innovative techniques and materials. It will provide practical knowledge and inspiration so that learners learners will know how to deliver future innovation. These activities will address the horizontal priority of “Open and innovative practices in a digital area” and higher education priority of “Tackling skills gaps and mismatches”.
