Background:Digital solutions have the potential to radically transform education. Using virtual reality as a primary tool for leadership training can improve healthcare systems by broadening the experiences of healthcare leaders thus providing better outcomes, services and quality to patients across the EU. Virtual reality simulation offers educators the chance to provide students with experiential learning that would otherwise not be available to them. This project uses virtual reality to increase the leadership capabilities of future healthcare managers and policy makers using public health crises as the key theme of the training programme. Leadership education within healthcare is vital to healthcare systems. Health professionals are dealing with constant changes to both the systems they work in and the patients they serve. Equipping the health workforce with the skills to deal with this change is of pressing importance for educators, researchers and policy makers. And further to this, the interconnected nature of global society has highlighted that healthcare leaders increasingly face common challenges and require similar skillsets, creating an urgent need for transnational coordination of healthcare leadership which is currently severely lacking.Objectives:The project aims to facilitate the development of knowledge, skills and attitudes relevant to leadership and management in healthcare, incorporating human resource management, financial management, disaster management and quality processes. The project aims to encourage understanding of the impact of leadership and effective management on healthcare systems, and the positive change that it can have. For this reason, public health crises, with their numerous complexities, will be used as the key topic for the project´s virtual reality based educational toolkit. The project objectives are:•To develop a multifaceted toolkit to support healthcare educators teach leadership to healthcare professionals across Europe•To test and implement innovative virtual reality practices in healthcare leadership education•To develop a leadership curriculum that can be used for online, blended and distance teaching and learning•To develop a 'train the trainers' e-learning platform that supports teachers and trainers in adapting their leadership courses to online & distance learning•To test, evaluate and peer review the toolkit in multiple EU countries•To disseminate and exploit the project results for maximum impactMethodology and Preparation:This project will create an innovative and highly essential educational tool to increase the leadership skills of healthcare professionals when dealing with public health disaster events. The project builds on experience gained through a pilot event, CovSim2018, which provided the project with a case study overview of a cross-faculty interprofessional simulation experience which aimed to develop practice-ready graduates. CovSim2018 involved developing a series of six individual but interlinked simulation stations with a linear major incident narrative to help contextualize the learning outcomes. These simulations comprised immersive elements which used both novel, innovative technology as well as being underpinned by existing, evidenced pedagogical tools and structures. The pilot and project proposal benefited from detailed feedback from delegates of the European Conference of Health Workforce Education & Research (Athens, Greece, May 2018) as well as during a full demonstration held at the same conference in Dublin during January 2019.Partners:The project brings together a consortium of 6 partners in 4 countries who specialise in the key areas of leadership, public health and virtual reality technology. All partners have extensive experience in health workforce education and pedagogical change. Results and Impact:Overall, the project will develop a Leadership Academy toolkit that can be used through online/virtual, blended or face-to-face training and learning. Specifically, this toolkit will involve standard videos and presentations, virtual reality in the form of both realists 360 degree video and computer-generated environments, along with other associated training and learning resources. Additionally, a 'train the trainer' e-learning platform will enable educators to understand how best to incorporate the toolkit and other digital online technology into healthcare leadership teaching, training and learning. All resources will be fully tested and peer reviewed by two higher education institutes. The project is designed so that the toolkit has scope to be taken up by higher education organisations across the EU and beyond. The toolkit will be fully open access and free to use. The multifaceted nature of the learning tools will allow for the products to be adapted to educators' specific needs, thus enabling them to deliver high quality inclusive digital education on leadership in healthcare.

The increasing demand for healthcare services, driven by demographic shifts throughout Europe will increase the number of jobs and the required skills of professionals in the health sector. Recently the need for digital skills for health care professionals is acknowledged at EU level. Digi4He will provide a platform for digital skills training in the health care sector. EU Educational Institutes, VETs, Health Care Associations and relevant EU Enterprises will exchange skills, experience and accessibility to be embodied in a single high quality training framework improving Digital Skill training all over European Countries. At first the content will be defined by determining the digital skills every health professional must possess to use eHealth solutions to their full potential after the verification of the specific educational needs of Doctors, Operators and professionals of digital technology of medical imaging equipment. Then partners will develop user-adapted training modules on the specific context concerning digital image processing and administration, including recent changes on pedagogical landscape of Health care distance learning with the use of innovative Vocational Open Online Courses (VOOCs) for Digital Skills on health domain topics like medical imaging. After the evaluation of the approach’s functionality through the pilot study over 4 EU countries and adjustment of the educational framework that finally will be accredited using the appropriate EU directives and Agencies of training accreditation, (with SLP Certificates, nano-degrees, badges), improving quality of national and European Education on digital technologies in health sector. Finally Digi4He will provide the developed open-access training framework additionally with its technical support to the community of Health care professionals of EU. The partnership will work towards the educational framework to be utilized and integrated in national and EU level VET training systems on health.

Background:----------------------VET trainers need to be urgently assisted to catch up with the range of digital technology advancements taking place in the healthcare sector as a result of Industry 4.0 technologies. There is a need to provide European healthcare VET trainers and mentors with a one-stop toolkit that provides them with an open repository of relevant training resources including training material, e-learning content and relevant case-studies of industry 4.0 technologies as applied in health care scenarios.Health care professionals are working adults that need to be supported with extending their competences to cater for the range of digital technologies infiltrating the health sector such as 3D printing, Augmented and Virtual Reality, Robotics and Artificial Intelligence. For this reason, educators as well as other personnel involved in training such health care professionals urgently need a VET toolkit to aid them in effectively in reaching this goal.Objectives:------------------The main aim of this Project called digi4HEALTH (A Digital VET Toolkit for Promoting the 4th Industrial Revolution in the European Health Sector) is to develop a novel digital toolkit by which European VET Trainers and health sector mentors can reach out and assist healthcare professionals and stakeholders to catch up with technologies of the 4th Industrial Revolution. To achieve this aim, the following objectives have been set:OB1: To develop a Curriculum targeted at healtcare personnel to learn about Heath 4.0 and its underlying technologies;OB2: To develop twelve case-studies portraying how different technologies can be used in a Health 4.0 environmentOB3: To develop an e-Learning platform explicitly for Heath4.0 and its underlying technologies0B4: To develop an innovative digital VET trainers toolkit integrating a set of training resources including case-studies, fact sheets, presentations and e-learning content OB5: To evaluate the digital VET toolkit with a set of health care professionals in one of the partner countriesOB6: To disseminate & exploit the digi4Health project results Number and Profile of Participants:----------------------------------------------------------To address these goals, the digi4HEALT project brings together six European entities ranging from VET Training Institutions, public HEI, private technology service providers, an international network of health workforce educators, a health and social innovation enterprise as well as a technology park with access to expertise in digital and medical technologies. These partners were purposely chosen to ensure a good balance between experts in VET pedagogy, Continous Professional Development and curriculum development, Industry 4.0 digital technologies, as well as stakeholders from the heatlhcare target sector.Results & Methodology:--------------------------------------On completion, the digi4HEALTH project will deliver the following results (R):R1: A novel VET Curriculum explicitly addressing the training needs of helping healthcare personnel to catch up with Health4.0 digital technologiesR2: A set of case-studies which VET trainers and heathcare mentors can use to demonstrate how Health4.0 digital technologies can be exploited in a heathcare service environmentR3: Novel VET training material, fact sheets and resources based on the curriculum (R1) above that will be openly available for customisation by VET trainers/mentors beyond the project partnersR4: An original digi4HEALTH e-Learning platform integrating the case-studies (R2), training material and resources (R3)R5: An innovative digital VET Toolkit that openly provides access from a single point of entry,me to the resources developed including the Curriculum, the case-studies, the courseware as well as the e-Learning course. Accompanying the Toolkit will be a framework guiding the VET trainers and healthcare mentors on how to use the Toolkit resources.The three phases (PH) involved in the digi4HEALTH implementation methodology are : - PH1: Planning Phase - PH2: Solution Development Phase - PH3: Solution Testing & Exploitation PhasePotential Impact and Long-Term Benefits------------------------------------------------------------------As the main output, The Toolkit will be an open type VET educational resources, it is expected to have a major impact on European VET trainers and healthcare mentors beyond the digi4HEALTH consortium too, as this Toolkit will give them open access to a range of digital resources they can use and even customize for their own training needs. As partner INHWE has a range of members both from Europe and beyond, the project outputs will be exposed to a spectrum of VET Trainers, mentors and learners in the healthcare sector. As a consequence of this project, a large number of European VET trainers and healthcare sector stakeholders will be able to update their skills on Health4.0 technologies.