Improving digital competences of the health workforce in Spain and Estonia

The Commission is supporting Spain and Estonia in their efforts to strengthen the digital health literacy of their health workforce. To achieve a sustainable transformation of the digital health and care system, Catalonia and Estonia want to implement concrete actions aligned with the Digital Competence Framework for Citizens (DigComp).

Context

For health and care systems, strengthening digital competences of their workers is essential to boost the adoption of digital tools and services ‘to improve prevention, diagnosis, treatment, monitoring and management of health-related issues and to monitor and manage lifestyle-habits that impact health’. Notably, the health workforce needs to gain understanding, confidence and knowledge about how they can use digital tools to bring better and safe care for patients.

Catalonia and Estonia share mature eHealth ecosystems, including a widespread use of the electronic health record by different health providers, and widely available and used IT devices and applications processing health information.

Support delivered

The Catalan health authorities, in collaboration with the Universitat Oberta de Catalonia (UOC), are developing a comprehensive training strategy to help design continuous training itineraries and material to improve, assess and certify digital competences for the 15 healthcare professions defined in the Spanish Law (e.g. nurses, physicians, pharmacists, physiotherapists, etc.).

In Estonia, the technical support covers both higher education (university and higher education schools) curricula and continuous education and training programmes. It will provide recommendations for the improvement of the health workforce curricula and create appropriate and sustainable training programmes for the health workforce educators and pilot them.