Open Access

The aim of this European interprofessional Health Informatics (HI) Summer School was (i) to make advanced healthcare students familiar with what HI can offer in terms of knowledge development for patient care and (ii) to give them an idea about the underlying technical and legal mechanisms. According to the students’ evaluation, interprofessional education was very well received, problem-based learning focussing on cases was rated positively and the learning goals were met. However, it was criticised that the online material provided was rather detailed and comprehensive and could have been a bit overcharging for beginners. These drawbacks were obviously compensated by the positive experience of working in international and interprofessional groups and a generally welcoming environment.

Interoperability, Data Protection and Security and Data Analytics are of high relevance for the future of eHealth and interprofessional care. Three online courses were therefore designed and delivered for these topics, all of which followed the same structure. A variety of materials were developed and different tools for knowledge transfer, communication and collaboration were used.

This report summarizes and discusses the development, main achievements and overall progress of The Interprofessional European eHealth Programme in Higher Education (eHealth4all@EU) project. The project evolved through a strong partnership between members of the consortium, grounding its activities on previous initiatives like TIGER and taking them one step further while looking into the digital health competencies required by graduate students working in health and care and providing teaching approaches and other initiatives to extend further a set of core competencies: Health Information Systems Interoperability, Data Security and Privacy and Data Analytics. Although the project activities underwent during the pandemic period, a condition that forced reorganization and adaptation of the workplan, the main initiatives like the identification of significant areas of interest for digital health competencies and related relevant teaching methods that foster active learning paved the way for the construction of learning content structured around a syllabus aimed at distance learning and faceto- face learning moments developed with the intent for reuse and fostering the development of these set of competences in future Health Professionals. To this purpose, we are convinced that grounding steps have been taken with these eHealth4All@EU activities and initiatives.

The University of Eastern Finland was the responsible partner of IO1: European eHealth Education: Policy and Practice Review. The aim of this intellectual output was to customize and validate the already existing international health informatics recom-mendations. Based on that the aim was also to describe the priorities of core compe-tencies and learning outcomes particularly in the fields addressed by this project. The methods used were a scoping review and focus group interviews. The aim of the scoping review was to explore how education in health informatics (HI) has been taught by evaluating the existing international frameworks and reported ed-ucations in HI. The scoping review was conducted based on the instructions of Joanna Briggs Institute to find English language publications published between 2016 and 2020. All publications found in the bibliographical database MEDLINE via PubMed, Scopus and Web of Sciences were included. The results indicated that education in HI is essential to everyone, and everyone needs skills and knowledge in both technical and non-technical skills in HI. Education in HI should be introduced already in the first year of the education and with time increase the knowledge to a more advanced level. The teaching methods can vary between lectures in class to a more hybrid method. The aim of the online focus group interview was to investigate the needs of HI compe-tencies in health care. To achieve the answers, two main questions were used as a base of the interview. The first question focused on how knowledge and competencies in health informatics could contribute to improving health care. The second question focused on which HI competencies are seen as important to learn and how to achieve them. Online focus group interviews were conducted in each of the three countries. The interviews were done the own languages (German, Portuguese, and Finnish) and later summarized and translated to English. The focus group interviews concluded that there are challenges and possibilities in health informatics. It also highlighted the com-petencies seen as important to have in daily working life. For example, skills in appli-cations in patient care, knowledge in IT-background and IT related management are considered important.

Digitalization in healthcare and the increasing availability of data demand data literacy competences of nurses and other healthcare professionals including technical, ethical and communication skills. The international Spring School 2023 “Information in Healthcare – From Date to Knowledge” aimed at these competences covering interoperability, data protection and security, data analytics and ethical issues. These topics were embedded in the overall case of data-driven quality improvement for diabetes patients in a region. The curriculum includes an online preparation-phase and a five-days attendance week, incorporating problem-based and group work approaches. According to the studentt’s evaluation, the awareness of the importance of the topics was raised and theoretical as well as practical application skills were improved. The Spring School enhanced data literacy competences, critical thinking, problem-solving, interprofessional und intercultural skills among healthcare professionals. Such course offering can contribute to meeting the increasing challenges of digitalization in healthcare.