Work package 16: Education and Training

Brief description and aims of work

The rising gap between basic research and clinical practice caused by the explosion of science and the advances from High Performance Computing has happened so fast that the majority of physicians are unaware of the possibilities of what modern IT technology can provide. VPH models leading to decision support need to be used and validated in real clinical settings by physicians for further development, as feedback from stakeholders is essential to improve and optimize these tools and services. Only a close cooperation between all stakeholders in health care including IT researchers will help to close the gap in translational research.
This implies an obvious need to develop educational courses and tools (preferably multimedia, and online), interactive educational modules and training workshops so that physicians become aware off and learn about today’s possibilities in the ICT sector, as they need to use such tools in the future. Due to the inherent complexity and dynamic properties of tumours, basic knowledge on computational biosciences, such as systems biomedicine and bioinformatics, which are fundamental for making dynamic inferences on a personal basis, should enter into the standard curricula of physicians. At the end of such a process curricula of medical schools need to be changed if personalized medicine is to become a reality.

This work package will address all stakeholders to give them the opportunity to learn about the p-medicine environment, tools and services. Depending on the tools and services developed in p-medicine such training and education programs will be helpful for basic scientists, as well as for patients to learn more about their disease in an understandable way.

The objectives of this work package are:

• To impart understanding of the vocabulary and systems biology which underlie translational cancer research and understanding of IT infrastructures and their possibilities e.g. the p-medicine environment
• To teach professionals when to use p-medicine tools or services, which one to use and how to make them work for their patients’ benefit
• To help patients to understand and use the IEmS (patient empowerment service)

Work package leader

•  WP 15
• WP 17