Digital Skills: Articulate the Big WHY and Acknowledge that Training Is Paramount

For further information, please click on the link to slides and the conference publication:

• The presentation by Alvisa Palese: "Digital EducationaL programme involVi g hEalth pRofessionals (DELIVER): An overview of the project and its main expected results" at the 15th International Scientific Conference, on June 9th 2022 - Bled (Slovenia)
• Conference publication from the 15th International Scientific Conference "Digitalization and Education in Health Science on June 9th 2022 - Bled (Slovenia). 

Findings from a large scientific data collection show that the needs for digital skills are quite similar across the four EU partner-countries (Italy, Slovenia, Spain and Denmark) in which almost 500 health care professionals and managers were asked about their opinion. They request better training and abilities to in order to bridge the current skills gap that keeps them from confidently using the technology available for everyday purposes.

The big WHY digital technology matters

The picturesque town of Bled in Slovenia on 9 June 2022 accommodated the 15th International Scientific Conference in Digitization and Education in Health Sciences. Our Italian partner, Dr. Alvisa Palese from University of Udine, presented the first scientific output from our mutual project, DELIVER. Together with partners from Slovenia and Spain, we are working on a program to enhance the digital skills of Health Care Professionals (HCP) and HCM (Health Care Managers).

From a project perspective, we assess that a focus must be on addressing the mind-set of our target group: The role of management and organization in facilitating the big WHY digital technology make sense and ways to create better conditions for getting to know new technology and to reflect about its daily use.

Training is paramount in drawing attention to the value of digital technology

Training is paramount in order to see and acknowledge the value of digital technology, thus training evidently becomes a focal point for the health care professionals to feel competent and to work efficiently in a gradually more digitized health care sector adapting to the digital transformation.

The terminology digital skills

The DELIVER project takes a broader approach to the meaning of the term digital skills.

Focus entails covering the skills gap to work with a specific ICT and digital healthcare solution as well as digital literacy – meaning an awareness of the development in digital technologies, a readiness to adapt, the necessary skills to implement and lastly, the ability to communicate and disseminate knowledge of digital technology.

The term Digital skills involves a broad array of underlining concepts to do with digital competences and digital literacy, to mention a few: Development, implementation, awareness, communication & dissemination, problem solving, user skills, etc.

The DELIVER project aims to enhance the digital skills of HCPs by supporting the digital transformation of health within and across European regions

The digitization is dramatically requesting a wider usage of digital technologies in all settings of the health care system

The Healthcare Professionals (HCP) are the core actors of the digital transformation of health care settings

In addition to specific digital knowledge they will require skills capable of transferring their professional competencies into a new digitized healthcare paradigm

Alvisa Palese presented the first scientific output from the project

The aim of the first intellectual output was to assess the level of digital competences of HCPs and Health Care Managers.

Furthermore, to map most common digital solutions and to ask about the general perception of digitization in general and its framework concerning eg. in everyday practices and ICT support structure, potential areas of improvement and decisive elements for implementation of digital solutions.

For the second intellectual output, assessment focused on organizational readiness, organizational attitudes toward digitization and in describing the organizational factors posing barriers as well as facilitators to the digitization and the implementation of an educational program.

Mixed methods were used as methodology in the data collection: a quantitative approach (IO1), self-assessment survey. The survey with a pilot was translated into three languages 395 respondents in total across three countries (Denmark, Italy & Slovenia). The qualitative approach was a merged list of questions from IO1 and IO2. An interview guide with a pilot, individual and focus group interviews. Number of respondents was 74 across the four partner-countries and 4 ICT specialists.