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Interactive Systems for Healthcare - IS4Health
Published on 05 September 2018
Portugal
Norte
This is the good practice's implementation level. It can be national, regional or local.
About this good practice
This project started with a collaboration between the University of Porto, the Telecommunications Institute (Porto, Portugal) and the Royal Portuguese Hospital (Brasil) to create a support model for the the cardiac auscultation within the medical practice.
Meanwhile, the project owners realized that little attention was given to auscultation within universities’ classes (most of seasoned doctors had difficulties on interpreting the cardiac signals and sounds). For that reason, it’s been decided to build an active simulator for auscultation teaching purposes on universities.
IS4H delivers interactive systems for healthcare by integrating different existing technologies to promote personalized healthcare delivery, efficient tools for health care professionals and educational tools, and it can be adapted to classrooms, e-learning and self-study environments.
The main stakeholders are Health Sciences’ teaching institutions and doctors; the main beneficiaries are students and health care professionals.
Meanwhile, the project owners realized that little attention was given to auscultation within universities’ classes (most of seasoned doctors had difficulties on interpreting the cardiac signals and sounds). For that reason, it’s been decided to build an active simulator for auscultation teaching purposes on universities.
IS4H delivers interactive systems for healthcare by integrating different existing technologies to promote personalized healthcare delivery, efficient tools for health care professionals and educational tools, and it can be adapted to classrooms, e-learning and self-study environments.
The main stakeholders are Health Sciences’ teaching institutions and doctors; the main beneficiaries are students and health care professionals.
Resources needed
The funds for the implementation are about 1 million euros for 10 years; to run the practice it takes about 300.000€/year.
On what comes to human resources, there’s 6 - 7 full-time collaborators working on the project.
On what comes to human resources, there’s 6 - 7 full-time collaborators working on the project.
Evidence of success
The IS4H clients are not only Medical Univ. of Porto, Lisboa and Castelo Branco, but also the Medical Univ. of Paris-Descartes and Nursing Univ. of Calgary, still growing.
One of the greatest achievements was, within the universities that adopted the practice, the change of the actual teaching method for cardiac auscultation: students started auscultating 60 virtual patients (with real registers) instead of 5 real patients / year, auscultating for 4h instead of 1h for the whole course.
One of the greatest achievements was, within the universities that adopted the practice, the change of the actual teaching method for cardiac auscultation: students started auscultating 60 virtual patients (with real registers) instead of 5 real patients / year, auscultating for 4h instead of 1h for the whole course.
Potential for learning or transfer
With globalization and Bologna process, European universities increased the number of virtual classes, along with an increase in the usage of online material to study. But this content is often not very realistic (especially when considering fields where the contact with living beings is required).
Moreover, due to the reorganization of the official curriculum, some frailties on the student’s needed skills for an effective practice as professionals might arise - so it’s important to highlight the possibility of improving this flaw by increasing the digital contact hours between the student and the subject and by adjusting the studying material to the present technology and respective users.
We encourage all institutions, both educational and managerial in health, to boost this type of good practice in order to ensure the best training of future health service professionals.
Moreover, due to the reorganization of the official curriculum, some frailties on the student’s needed skills for an effective practice as professionals might arise - so it’s important to highlight the possibility of improving this flaw by increasing the digital contact hours between the student and the subject and by adjusting the studying material to the present technology and respective users.
We encourage all institutions, both educational and managerial in health, to boost this type of good practice in order to ensure the best training of future health service professionals.
Further information
Website
Good practice owner
Organisation
IS4Health - Universidade do Porto
Portugal
Alentejo
Contact
Project Manager