Abstract:

The eHealth Eurocampus (ehealtheurocampus.eu) is an EU-funded Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership (2016-2019). It aims at preparing professionals able to cope with the challenge of “fostering a spirit of innovation in eHealth in Europe as the way forward to ensure better health and better and safer care for EU citizens, a more skilled workforce, more efficient and sustainable health and care systems, new business opportunities” (EC eHealth Action Plan 2012-2020).

This project has a truly European perspective, developing teaching materials in collaboration between universities and testing them on a highly diverse set of students. Partners: 8 higher education institutions, which represent 7 technical schools (Barcelona School of Informatics/ Polytechnic School, Mallorca/ Polytech Engineer School, Montpellier/ ISIS Engineering School, Castres/ Glyndwr University, Wales/ Hochschule Ulm/ Computer Science Department, Cyprus University) and 3 medical schools (Faculty of Nursing and Physiotherapy, Mallorca/ Medical School of Cyprus/ Sant Joan de Déu University School of Nursing, Barcelona), a regional centre of technological development and entrepreneurship promotion (Bit Foundation, Mallorca), and a European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation (EGTC Pyrenees-Mediterranean). The consortium represents different health management systems. This variety will help to form adaptable and international professionals, aware of the European diversity in this area.

Main objectives:
• Improving the RELEVANCE of higher education in the field of information and communication technologies (ICT) applications for health (eHealth)
• Enhancing the QUALITY of eHealth higher education through mobility and transnational cooperation
• Fostering EMPLOYABILITY through curricula adaptation to labour market needs
• Providing skills of [eHealth] ENTREPRENEURSHIP for students.

Included actions:
• The development of materials for 5 eHealth subjects: Innovation and Entrepreneurship (finished), IT for a Longer Independent Life (quite finished), Applications and Tools (quite finished), Robotics for Healthcare (on-going), and Graphics and Medical Imaging (on-going).
• Summer Schools: Entrepreneurship (Castres, 2017), Longer Independent Life (Wrexham, 2018), Robotics and Imaging (Barcelona, 2019). Participants are students from the partner institutions, mixing engineers with health students. Summer Schools are used as a testbed of materials and innovative teaching methodologies.
• Training Seminars: eHealth Teaching Challenges (Montpellier, 2017), Accessibility, Inclusion, Rehabilitation (Palma, 2018). For teachers and researchers from the consortium, exchanging best practices and knowledge.
• Final conference: a public general presentation of the project results (Barcelona, 2018)
• Digital platform to facilitate the distribution of the project outputs.

The eHealth Eurocampus is a project in which, for the first time, the use of ICT in healthcare is dealt from very different perspectives and disciplines: education, entrepreneurship, assistive healthcare medicine, medical robotics, medical imaging, privacy and data security, ethics... One of its main goals is to create an original eHealth teaching-learning space where university professors, students, researchers, and clinicians will be able to share their experiences and knowledge with the aim of improving the skills and employability of graduates. The experience until now is very valuable and successful.

Keywords:

eHealth education, interdisciplinary education, international cooperation, innovation in education, ICT for health.