The “Beyond the Emergency. Telecare for Non-Communicable Diseases through Simulation Techniques - BeEmTel” project was created as a response to the recent pandemic. Covid-19 revealed weaknesses in the healthcare system, especially in connection with the care of fragile patients, and in the training system, which remains unable to tackle the important challenge of reforming the ways that patients a
re treated and monitored. By 2050, in Europe, the proportion of older adults will most likely double from 11% to 22% of the total population. Several diseases are associated with a progressive reduction in functional capacity, leading to a persistent need for care over time. At the European level, these diseases account for roughly 80% of the causes of mortality
in people over 65. Most Non-Communicable Diseases (henceforth NCDs) are deeply connected with aging. NCDs include type 2 diabetes,
obesity, respiratory and heart disease, and dementia, to mention a few. They are gaining increasing interest in the EU due to their impact on early mortality, as well as on the levels of social and economic assistance they require around the world, and especially on the European continent. Efforts to contain the Covid-19 pandemic raised the need to improve the quality of care for patients with NCDs and mitigate the impact for patients, their families and society. To guarantee constant and high-quality support for NCD patients, family members and caregivers, medical assistance will be increasingly decentralized at a territorial level, even more so in the post-Covid era. Fostering the decentralization of medical facilities through an extensive healthcare network – made potentially manageable thanks to innovative technological tools – could provide a practical solution, which has already been put into practice in some European regions. It is
envisioned that the new profile of a health and social care professional will include additional advanced skills. For example, physicians, nurses, psychologists and psychiatrists will require multidisciplinary training that includes digital skills and more specific practical/clinical
competencies. Health and social care must aim to provide continuous assistance at the local level for managing patients with chronic conditions. Given the main gaps highlighted in the G20 digital health report of December 2020, it is time to strengthen specialist training courses for additional skills so that NCD patients can be taken care of with telemedicine support at the European level. In such a challenging context, the BeEmTel Partnership is convinced that there is an urgent need to promote strategies for improving teaching methods in the clinical practice, both face-to-face and remote. This is essential in order to meet the needs and continuous attention required by the most fragile
subjects with NCDs as well as address the need for support by family members and caregivers. The pandemic crisis accelerated the adoption of distance simulation (i.e., Live Simulation and Clinical Observation Scenarios Online), making an inclusive and high-quality multidisciplinary training possible for a variety of recipients with social and economic difficulties, educational differences, and physical impairments. BeEmTel complies with the requirements of the 2021-2027 Digital Education Action Plan, as digital technology, together with innovative education programmes, can help prepare undergraduate students and future professionals to develop advanced digital and technological
skills. Objectives
BeEmTel Partnership’s main objective is to create an innovative European curriculum dedicated to Telecare for NonCommunicable Diseases through educational tools based on remote (and
face-to-face) simulation techniques. Healthcare simulation, one of the best pedagogical tools for medical education, consists of techniques aimed at reproducing emergency medical situations in a secure teaching/learning environment. Healthcare Simulation promotes and enhances a multidisciplinary and multi-professional approach; The BeEmTel Partnership believes that distance simulation techniques - like Telesimulation - should already be implemented by graduating level students. Telesimulation is one of the various simulation experiences created by the simulation community. It refers to a new teaching methodology whereby telecommunication and Healthcare Simulation are combined in order to provide effective educational support. A Telesimulation event is designed to represent a simulated telemedicine meeting, and it may also refer to distance-based learning opportunities for “off-campus” simulated training. In this way, BeEmTel aims at providing
innovative education that can be available to learners from various disciplines. The BeEmTel training project has the ambitious goal of meeting the new healthcare needs, which will undergo a profound shift in the future. Introducing innovative educational methods is one of the main, shared aims behind the higher education e-Course. This goal is achievable for the medium- and longterm, even beyond the end of the course and availability of European funds. From the learners’ perspective, the role of simulation in healthcare education is to transition an academic learner to a practising clinician. This is a complex development process, of course, so the best way to direct such a transition is to consider the stages a clinical learner goes through to
become more competent. BeEmTel undertakes a formative clinical distance simulation that assumes the beneficiaries are still learning, in a process that is lengthy, elaborate, and marked by milestones. In this first stage of
learning, which includes the medical, psychological and technical basics, simulation methodology simplifies the concepts and demonstrates the impact of basic decisions on patient outcomes. Specifically, beneficiaries will directly experience and study the use of digital telemedicine platforms to support disease management. The strength and innovation of BeEmTel lie in already providing
some of these specialised skills in basic training. The aim is to disseminate theoretical and applied knowledge through high fidelity simulations, thanks to the use of dedicated digital platforms. Such knowledge will be useful for developing a new clinical
and decision-making approach as future professionals. In fact, BeEmTel will allow beneficiaries to already start gaining high-quality knowledge in order to manage health challenges as potential future professionals. Soft skills are crucial to tackling such a challenge because, due to the
progressive increase in the ageing population, digital assistance will soon become one of the main forms of care. Practical teaching based on repeated simulation sessions has been shown to foster
knowledge acquisition and self-assess technical skills. The BeEmTel Partnership envisions that potential learners could also become the software engineers of tomorrow, who will have to devise new AI-based communication systems in order to continue their university and working careers. All of these elements are necessary ingredients for pursuing a career in the healthcare sector. Implementation
The BeEmTel Partnership is composed of 7 partners (5 Countries), including 5 University institutions and 2 National Public bodies, as follows:
University of Eastern Piedmont (UPO) as organisation leader (Italy),
Ludwig-MaximiliansUniversitaet Muenchen (LMU) (Germany),
University of Thessaly (UTH) (Greece),
Zdravstveno veleučilište (UAH) (Croatia),
George Emil Palade University of Medicine, Pharmacy, Science, and Technology of Târgu Mureş (UTM) (Romania),
National Telemedicine Centre (NCT), the technical-scientific operational area of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS) (Italy), and
Department for Emergency Situations (DSU), within the Romanian Ministry of Internal Affairs (Romania). The main purpose of BeEmTel is to create an innovative European curriculum dedicated to Telecare for NonCommunicable Diseases through a teaching practice based on remote and face-to-face simulation techniques. The Training path includes an e-Course (80 hours) and live simulation techniques in Novara at the UPO Simnova Centre and in Munich at the HSC LMU (additional 80 hours). During the
implementation of BeEmTel, which is specifically customised for learners – undergraduate students from several disciplinary fields (nursing, medicine, psychology, psychiatry, engineers) –
open virtual conferences (three virtual multiplier events) and two in-person multiplier events will be held with the collaboration of diverse European Associated Partners (as stakeholders). The course will take place through a digital platform, which will also include didactic materials (from papers to downloadable video lessons), short video tutorials, and the Transferability Toolkit, a tool that houses information regarding all the e-Course activities. The e-Course will be realised in English and the languages of countries where there is active learner involvement. In order to structure the training course, needs analyses will take place on several levels. The process of mapping needs related to the care and assistance of patients with chronic diseases will allow us to understand the training gap to be addressed and which elements to include in creating an appropriate curriculum. The multidisciplinary BeEmTel e-Course is aimed at a
particular sector of the health and social care workforce that is undergoing profound and rapid change, mainly due to the pandemic crisis. The dynamic growth of a health and social care job is
particularly amenable to introducing new technological tools that future social and healthcare assistants will have to master in order to manage NCD patients and their caregivers. The ability to use teleconferencing to broadcast a simulation across geographical barriers promotes active learning of realistic scenarios and conditions, without the need of being physically present in the sim lab room. The e-Course will take place in a virtual training space that allows for communication between future professionals and sick and disadvantaged people. During a Telesimulation learning module, participants will immerse themselves in a simulated scenario and
engage within the scope of the lesson.
