The Role of EIT Health in Training the European Health Workforce

EIT Health is a Knowledge and Innovation Community (KIC) established by the European Institute for Innovation & Technology (EIT) in 2016. Bringing together research, innovation and education, its network of partners works together to innovate solutions to Europe's most pressing healthcare needs, ultimately to enable European citizens to live longer, healthier lives.

In terms of education, EIT Health is delivering cutting-edge, innovative trainings to prepare the health workforce to navigate future challenges brought on by an ever-evolving technological and digital landscape in the health and healthcare sectors. These trainings address a large span of learners, from students and researchers to executives, professionals, early entrepreneurs, citizens and patients.

Our society is currently undergoing a transformation that will have a high impact on new professions eliminating old professions and creating new ones (Bughin et al. 2018). Understanding the scope and the trends influencing that current transformation will help us to understand the skills needed for the future. In this context, in 2018, EIT Health began to take a closer look at disruptive trends that are transforming the health and healthcare sectors, and thereby identifying European Skill Needs that EIT Health shall prioritise in its development of novel education programmes designed for the future health workforce. Only by knowing what skills are relevant for the future, will we be able to prepare the future health workforce and thus uphold Europe’s innovation capacity.

To understand how health professions will change, we need to understand several ongoing trends which are driving the 4th industrial revolution and how they are affecting the skill needs. The world population has been speedily increasing and growing older, the burden of chronic diseases is also increasing, while the supply of medical professionals are unable to meet the growing needs of patients. Technological developments have also remarkably been on the rise in the last decades (Meskó et al. 2017). Some of these innovations and advances seek to improve the patient experience and reduce the burden of healthcare-related costs, however, the advances have also brought on new challenges particularly for health and healthcare professions. These trends are depicted in Figure 1. EIT Health has classified them as 'disruptive' vs. 'reactive' trends. Disruptive trends are reshaping healthcare and are beyond our control, while reactive trends are emerging as a reaction to these disruptive trends.

In our work, we have come to define digitalisation in health and healthcare as involving data, software and tools to analyse and exchange data and hardware to provide new tools. The current worldwide rise in the volume and availability of data goes along with an increase of tools and means to analyse and exchange information. Overall, digitalisation in healthcare has already started to change the ways in which diagnoses are made, treatments are designed, the delivery of healthcare services to patients and, ultimately, the patient experience.

The trend of digitalisation imposes the need for new digital competencies among practitioners, healthcare professionals’ ability to make rational decisions, and the understanding and engagement of the patient him/herself. In our research, we have defined these skills as the competencies to develop and use digital tools with the purpose of accessing, managing, analysing and interpreting data. Ten relevant skills in this area were identified listed here:

EIT Health partners are working together to create innovative education offerings and trainings for multiple learner groups, from students and researchers to executives, professionals, early entrepreneurs, citizens and patients. In terms of digitalisation, we aim to provide training and deliver cutting-edge skills on the one hand to health professionals and executives who will adopt and adapt to new technological developments in their workplace; on the other hand, we also train the end user in other words, the citizens and the patients.

EIT Health prepares health professionals to respond to these disruptive trends, for example:

In terms of citizen and patient training, EIT Health ultimately aims to improve the health and well-being of European patients and citizens, following a patient-centred approach, where individuals’ specific health needs and health outcomes are the driving force behind all healthcare decisions and quality measurements.

These trainings are designed to empower patients and citizens to use available knowledge, approaches, tools and methods in health innovation to manage their own health while actively taking part in the innovation process – all for the benefit of improved individual and population health outcomes. In this area of work, some best practices include:

EIT Health’s mandate is to act as an incubator of innovative health education programmes. Our mission also strengthens and contributes to the wider European health agenda. We expect that our efforts will be adopted by the European education market and continue to thrive and shape Europe’s future professionals and leaders. As the landscape of digital transformation continues to morph at a rapid pace, the trainings are designed to meet the challenges of lifelong learning to help health professionals thrive in the future.