Title: Medical Digital Environment and E-Learning Enhancement
Acronym: MEDELEN
Proposal abstract
For European citizens from 25 + an integrated digital learning environment should be developed for telehealth and home telecare in order to support health care professionals (postgraduates, physicians , nurses , health care providers ) to offer better health and teach patients with chronic illness in remote areas. The project is to improve the training quality in telehealth through an effective virtual environment with e-learning materials. To improve the collaboration between health care professionals , offering the opportunity to discuss and work as a team and learn from one another by increasing staff mobility to widen experience and increase mutual confidence. Telecommunications technology is used to provide video-based communications between patients and health care providers, allowing for observation and remote monitoring heart sounds , blood glucose , blood pressure etc. The telehomecare is a new form for health care in the European Union and much better known and sufficiently developed in the USA. There are few training programmes for health care providers to be trained in working in this new digital environment.
We will create online courses that will train physicians , nurses , health care providers and others involved in telehealth. The basic objective is to enhance faculty professional development in e-learning methodologies. Deliver advanced e-learning , synchronously and asynchronously and integrate real and simulated workplaces.
The benefits to the European community include enabling those involved in delivering the telehomecare to be trained in using the technology, conducting remote patients visits and finding the best way to work within health care teams to obtain better patients results.
The e-learning will allow new and already health care professionals to easily access effective training for telehealth and home telecare . The project will help telehealth and telehomecare become an effective part of the health care system in EU, resulting in quality of life improvements patients with chronic illness who will benefit from receiving health care in their home. In Europe the health care system is focused on the diagnosis rather than the provision of integrated, ongoing services for the management of chronic illnesses for patients living in their own homes. Individuals with chronic illnesses are expected to travel to doctors' offices and ambulatory care centers for care despite limitations in mobility, sensory perception, and cognitive acuity. Often the burden for transportation and accompaniment to appointments falls on family members, who must take time off paid work for this task.
1. Project Description and objectives.
1.1 Project objectives.
Our objectives are to :
a) Develop rich, multimedia learning materials ( video , 3-D animations, interactive simulations exercises ) to support the telehealth and home telecare.
b) Model effective communication processes across health care boundaries in conjunction with telehomecare application.
c) Enhance faculty professional development in e-learning methodologies.
d) Deliver advanced e-learning, synchronously and asynchronously.
e) Integrate real and simulated workplaces.
1.2 Project Description
We will create and develop telehealth and home telecare systems with online courses that will use real-time video broadcasting to teach health-care teams to deliver telehomecare in a way that is efficient, structured and patient-centred. The courses will cover the legal, ethical, cultural and technology issues surrounding the interdisciplinary provision of telehomecare, as well as providing practical experience using interactive clinical simulations. We will :
a ) Develop multimedia-enabled curricula that will teach the skills necessary for working in this technological environment.
b) Develop an online, modularized multi-media curriculum, and store these learning objects in a digital learning object repository for reuse ( this may be the MEDELEN Digital library)
c) Provide learning objects and curricula for patient education.
d) Design an effective and high quality video that will demonstrate how to use telehealth and telehomecare technologies.
e) Design an effective and high quality interactive multimedia learning objects to teach and test about principles associated with this field.
f) Create an online, modularized and customizable courses that can be used over broadband networks to provide training on effective communication within health care communities of practice.
g) Develop knowledge management strategies to facilitate team-based patient care.
h) Provide an online learning and knowledge management forum that can
be shared across each discrete unit of the health care team, resulting in better patient-physician and health care team communication.
i) Develop a comprehensive evaluation plan and Best Practices guide that can ensure successful replicability of the project across other locations.
The telehealth and telehomecare courses that will be developed will be first on the following fields and all EU languages:
a) COPD ( Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease )
b) Asthma
c) Heart failure
d) Coronary Artery Disease
e) Diabetes ( 1 and 2 )
f) Blood pressure
g) Psychologic assistance for the patients and help for the health care providers
h) Arthritis
The outcomes will be :
a) The design of effective and high quality interactive multimedia learning objects (approximately 150 learning objects) to teach and test about principles associated with telehomecare.
b) The creation of an online, modularized and customizable curricula that can be used over broadband networks to provide training on effective communication within health care communities of practice.
c) The development of standards of practice and education components for patients and health care providers for the provision of telehomecare
d) Best practices for the establishment of similar projects in other areas.
e) Increased faculty advancement and skills in e-learning development and delivery.
f) A high level of sustainability.
g) Improved innovation in e-learning in a professional school context that will be transferable to medical schools and workplaces.
h) Improved rate of lifelong learning.
2.0 MEDELEN Overview
The access in the training is true that is limited. For that reason will be developed a online training program for teleheath and telehomecare. The course materials will include text, video, CD-ROM, interactive clinical simulations, quizzes, graphics, workplace activities.
The online courses will be developed to meet the needs of all those involved in the telehealth and telehomecare as: doctors, nurses, health care managers, as well as the telehealth suppliers.
This approach will lead to the online courses development with multimedia, duration approximatelly 2 months for the health care professionals. Those who will want to participate will be called to inspect these courses for the quality of content, the design as well as the utility of this type of learning so that they satisfy their needs.
Currently most healthcare professionals have little experience in telehealth and telehomecare. This project will deliver novel, practical and cost effective forms of e-learning to health professionals which will enable them to participate inn telehealth teams. The intent is to eliminate the barriers to learning and participation through the development of user-friendly and effective learning tools and in a platform friendlier without a lot of technical difficulties for the users, is to create health care professionals that would work in this field from distance and they provide the required support to the patients with chronic illnesses.
With this way will be created small scientific teams in each institution that participate in this project so that is created a bigger interdisciplinary community that exchange opinions, experiences and problems that will result each time depending on the case of patient.
Implementation
2.1 Online courses development
In the online courses development will participate doctors, nurses , health care managers and providers that will collaborate with the team that will design and develop these courses and materials.
We will create three work teams. The first team will be health professionals who has no experience in the telehealth / telehomecare field.
The second team will be constituted health professionals with telehealth experience and the third team will be constituted by the patients who will undergo training on new technologies based their illness.
a) The courses will be accessible to the members of the three work teams; delivered in clear simple language and focused on the needs of each team.
b) We will provide self assessment tools so that all participants of all degrees of experience can accurately evaluate their performance .
c) Will exist for the user a virtual environment where participating might discuss online and have easy access to courses content.
d) The time duration of the courses will be 3 hours per week and will provide support in the workplaces and time in case that it needs training of access from home.
2.2 Online courses design.
The courses that will be designed from the development team will edure approximately 2 months and will provide time and for learning and for application.
We will begin an online seminar aimed to give in the beginners basic elements so that they begin the courses. A part of courses will include modules with online discussions, studies of various cases, multiple choice quizzes, video, graphics and photographs.
The issues will be relative with each case so as the participating can comprehend more the subject , place questions and resolve any queries. The communication with the technical support will be in comprehensible language for the beginners.
The students will have e-mails and also will exist questions from the student’s side at the duration of the courses. All materials for the courses will have small modules in order to be facilitated the students, for example the students might see small in duration videos, with full details, on the telemedicine equipment with photographs.
Will be evaluated the participants needs so that can be evaluated also the needs of learning. The courses will have different cases in order to familiarized in diffrent technologies and practices on telehealth and telehomecare fields.
The sectors where we will begin to apply the telehealth and telehomecare , will be initially five :
a) COPD
b) Asthma
c) Hypertension
d) Diabetes ( 1 & 2 )
e) Psychologic assistance for the patients and help for the health care providers
and the modules of the courses will include :
1) Introduction on the telehomecare subject.
2) History of telemedicine
3) Terminology
4) Courses Delivery.
5) Documentation.
6) Telehomecare tools
7) FAQ
8) Configuration of relevant and answerable questions and estimates of probability and risk.
9) Continuing education in the telehomecare subject.
10) Training in the workplaces with concrete technology.
The overall course design will include :
a) The opportunity for students to customize their course by providing different routes through the course depending on their needs.The cources modules might be received separately. The participants will have the possiblity to select which modules they wish to receive and thus the institutes might shape more personal courses that will be based on selected modules. These courses will be complete , with planning of learning as well as choices of evaluation in order to exists effective transport of knowledge into practice.
b) Provision of a secure online discussion forum to enhance learning, reflective practice and networking.
c) Provision of a tutorial that orientates students to the computer skills required in the course and the course platform.
d) The tutorial will be open and free to anyone.
e) After of the online courses attendance from the participants there will be online examination to be passed.
2.3 Methodology Planning
Methodology planning will directed to i. design/delivery of online learning ii. learning activities (specific content) and iii. application of metadata to these activities. (have I got this right?) This will allow the research team to develop prototype courses efficiently in conjunction with programme participants (i.e. the learners). User generated input and feedback will be used to recurrently modify the course content and format so that user needs are met.
The online learnig that is suseptible of extension means online training environment that distributes the learning with the expiry of time and interval and helps the beginners into be possible to translate their skills online in eneryday toutine practices, solidifying in that way the online learning..
For example, the courses that are received online, expose frequent the beginners in a given knowledge body, they participate in clarified activities of learning, the write an exercise and moved then in next courses or programs.
This can extend itslf in order to included the process of structure materials that will allow in the beginners to incorporate the knowledge and the skills that be learning online. The home telecare conline courses will be drawn on a new approach in the educational planning. The model of educational planning reperesents which of learning objects are presented, if the beginner is nurse in contradiction with a doctor, pharmacist, director or other potential learner.
The content can become in their different levels for each potential candidate role : required, optional, unusefull. That is to say saying optional content for the beginner, we mean that will include more information or will be presented a relative content. The unnecessary content will not be presented to the beginners.
This method requires that all metadata include one of these three choices for each potential role of beginner and the delivery environment and the documents can recognize the beginner’s role and react appropriatelly.
3.0 MEDELEN Digital library
All these learning objects will be stored in a digital repository for reuse and will include :
· Videos that represent healthcare professionals that will deliver telehealth courses installing the relevant equipment.
· 3-D animations.
· Interactive simulations exercises.
· Intelligent search of image.
· Multilingual health information access regarding telecare –lingual data services.
· Intelligent user interfaces.
· User / sustem learning and adaptation process associated with interactive use.
· Autonomous intelligent agents to support participants needs..
· Presentation and visualization of telehealth and telehomecare information.
· Efficient data capture, representation, preservation and archiving.
· Text processing and document management ; natural language analysis for data extraction and for structure and topical segmentation.
· Structuring and linking of telecare information and documents.
· Creating and converting digital information with no cost effective methods .
3.1 Metadata
· Metadata types and standards development.
· Means and methods for preserving and presenting context and data elements. This system will be better serve the storage of materials, the search and retrieval. The technologies to be used for the development are the JavaScript, HTML, XML , Microsoft SQL Server.