The EU project that has contributed to the strategy to improve the digital skills of health professionals in Catalonia and Estonia comes to an end

The team of the Digital Skills Department of the TIC Salut Social Foundation has successfully concluded the project ‘Improving Digital Competencies of the Health Workforce in Catalonia and Estonia’ (improvement of the digital skills of health professionals in Catalonia and Estonia). Among the various milestones achieved in Catalonia, the project has made it possible to improve the digital skills map defined in 2021, develop training content for 9 of the 11 digital skills identified, and create a proposal for a strategic training plan for healthcare professionals, as well as the set of criteria to implement it.

The project has received funding from the European technical support instrument of the Directorate General for Structural Reform Support (DG REFORM) of the European Commission for two years jointly with Estonia, due to the similarity of needs in the same sphere. Apart from the TIC Salut Social Foundation and the Ministry of Social Affairs of Estonia as beneficiaries, the project has been coordinated by NTT DATA, with the collaboration of the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) and Tallinn University of Technology.

According to the head of Digital Training at the TIC Health Social Foundation, Elisenda Reixach, “the experience of sharing good practices with Estonia and getting to know their vision and approach to address the digital skills of health professionals has been very positive, as it has allowed all parties to learn and create synergies in this area”. 

Main results in Catalonia

The European support instrument has focused on defining and designing the strategy and the future training model in digital skills for healthcare professionals. One of the main results in Catalonia has been the updating of the Specific digital skills map for healthcare professionals, which includes a total of 11 specific digital competencies for health professionals, structured in four areas: management and analysis, communication and collaboration, digital awareness and professional development.

With the identification of each of the competencies and their corresponding indicators, the project participants have also drawn up a proposed training model oriented towards learning based on challenges and experiences, through problem-solving and decision-making. This has been possible thanks to the close collaboration of expert authors and validators in the field of health, who have been able to develop the contents of 9 competencies.

To check the value of the developed training content, last June, the project carried out a training pilot test of the materials for the Ethics, civics and digital well-being competency. 13 health professionals, mainly from the Xiscat network, and 6 training managers participated in the pilot. As a result, health professionals evaluated the course satisfactorily and collected comments to improve the content.

The strategy followed throughout this project is also based on the following studies and scientific articles: the Exploratory study of the level of digital skills of health professionals, the Piloting of the Model for the Evaluation of Digital Competencies in Health, and the articles ‘Measuring the Digital Competencies of Catalan Health Care Professionals as a Key Step Toward a Strategic Training Plan: Digital Competency Test Validation Study’ and ‘Design, Implementation, and Analysis of an Assessment and Accreditation Model to Evaluate a Digital Competency Framework for Health Professionals: Mixed Methods Study’ published in the scientific journal JMIR.

Strategic training plan for healthcare professionals

The studies and results of the project have enabled Catalonia to design a proposal for a strategic training plan for healthcare professionals, and to define the set of criteria to implement, monitor and evaluate it.

The project does not end with the completion of the European support instrument, as the strategic plan will need to be deployed and a wide range of activities will need to be carried out so that healthcare professionals can benefit from the training and improve their digital competencies. The TIC Salut Social Foundation, the Department of Health and the Catalan Health Service will be involved in this strategic plan, which will continue to work within the framework of the project COMPDIG-Health, created in 2020 to respond to the approach of challenge 4 of the Professional Dialogue Forum, which proposed improving the digital competencies of healthcare professionals.

The Directorate General for Structural Reform Support (DG REFORM) of the European Commission has as its mission to provide support for the preparation and implementation of administrative and structural reforms that promote growth in Europe, through the mobilisation of funds and technical know-how of the European Union