Overview

Key messages:

• There is an urgent but often unmet need to ensure Europe’s health and care workforce have the right digital skills and competencies.
• Providing appropriate education and training is central to digitizing health systems and to:
  • Enabling the effective uptake of digital health technologies
  • Exploiting the capacity of new technologies to improve patient outcomes, reduce administrative burdens and improve working conditions
  • Ensuring ethical practice that aligns with regulatory requirements
  • Implementing the European Health Data Space.
• Digital skills education and training in the EU are insufficient, with particular gaps for some professional groups and more advanced digital health areas such as robotics, artificial intelligence and genomics. There is also an overreliance on courses in English.
• The EU is an important player in terms of policy direction, technical support and funding for digital up-and-reskilling.
• Competency frameworks guide core training and education needs and – although they must be adapted to different groups and contexts – tend to include a core knowledge, skills and behaviours in data literacy and information; communication and collaboration; safety and security; problem solving and analysis; and digital content creation.
• All competency frameworks, and education and training curricula, require regular review to ensure that they keep up with the rapid pace of change of digital technologies and are responsive to the specificities of the care setting, the professions involved and the national/regional context.
• A set of “enablers” improve the availability of digital skills education and training, not least:
  • Comprehensive digital health strategies that focus on learning opportunities
  • Legislation that embeds digital skills and competencies in education and training requirements
  • Sufficient funding to provide education and training at all levels
  • Cooperation between sectors (particularly health and education).
• Digital skills can only be used effectively if digital health technologies are well implemented, which in turn requires the right technical infrastructure, funding and legal frameworks.
• Structural barriers such as staff shortages and technological issues can reduce time and motivation for digital skills education and training.
• National and regional policy-makers can support digital skills through vision and leadership and by
  • Addressing the wider workforce challenges that block participation
  • Securing buy-in from professional associations
  • Integrating it better into continuing professional development
  • Encouraging co-creation and monitoring and evaluation of user experience to make technologies user-friendly.
• Employers can support digital skills through organizational leadership, strategic allocation of training budgets, embedding digital learning in day-to-day activities and adapting opportunities to suit different schedules.
• Policy-makers also need to plan for new digital roles in areas like genomics or personalized medicine and to provide for additional support roles.
• New roles will enable successful implementation and offer career development opportunities that may encourage retention and attract young people to work in the health ecosystem.