Abstract:

The subject of eHealth is an emerging academic discipline which in our changing society, has been lauded as a potential contribution to the amelioration of some of the problems caused by higher ageing populations and lower birth rates. The question of how we increase knowledge of eHealth issues, and who is best-suited to teach and learn such a multidisciplinary subject is the theme of this paper.

We present an initiative called the eHealth Eurocampus (http://ehealtheurocampus.eu), which is an EU-funded Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership, whose primary objective is to determine the requirements for future eHealth education, and to produce eHealth learning materials that can be used to prepare students for professional life in an eHealth work environment. A total of 10 EU-wide organisations, including Universities, a Hospital, and an eHealth Technology Company form the partnership, and teachers and trainers from each of them have contributed to the development and testing of the project outputs. Also, students from all relevant organisations are involved, most specifically as participants in Summer Schools that have been used to pilot the learning materials. The teachers, trainers and students have backgrounds in a number of disciplines, including: ICT, Engineering, Nursing, Medicine, Business and Occupational Therapy.

This paper reports data that was collected and analysed during one of the Summer Schools, which took place in Wrexham, Wales, UK in the Summer of 2018. The topic of the Summer School was “IT for a Longer Independent Life”, and was attended by 46 multidisciplinary students, and supported by 13 teachers and trainers. The Summer School took place over a 2 week period, and comprised theoretical teaching, practical laboratory work, interaction with service users (performed by actors), all culminating in the prototype development of eHealth apps, which were then presented and evaluated by the whole cohort. Students worked in multidisciplinary teams, and their experience of working and learning together was evaluated at the end of the Summer School by way of a survey method.

We present the results of this survey, which clearly demonstrate that the teaching and learning approach was highly appropriate and satisfactory, and that students benefited from working in their multidisciplinary teams. Another positive was that the students appreciated experiencing the different perspectives and approaches of other students and their disciplines, something which we argue is critical for eHealth education to develop and emerge as an academic subject in its own right.

Keywords:

eHealth, multidisciplinary teaching, student perceptions.