International MUDDIE week teached how to develop new eHealth solutions

Between 05.02-09.02 Tartu Health Care College had the pleasure to organise intensive course on the topic of Multiprofessional Digital Developer – a project funded by Nordplus.

The main aim of the intensive course was to offer Nordic-Baltic experts and students the possibility to share practices and work together with customer oriented service design in digital health and welfare. The intensive course is a platform for workshops designing, building and further developing services in eHealth and eSocial, as part of the DeDiWe project. In the DeDiWe project (Developer of Digital health and Welfare services, 2015-2018, funded by the Central Baltic).

During the week students and teachers from Tartu Health Care College, Red Cross Medical College of Riga Stradiņš University, Latvia Culture College at Latvian Academy of Culture in Latvia, Laurea University of Applied Sciences and Arcada University of Applied Sciences gathered to solve current health care technology related challenges proposed by Estonian enterprises MediKeep, MediHub, Cognuse, Viljandi Hospital, eHealt lab of Tallinn University of Technology and Finnish enterprises Layette app and Malmi Hospital.

The jury, consisted of teachers and company representatives, chose team Undecisives solution as the best one. Their idea was to develop a mobile application for Medihub, which will provide better aftercare for the patients seeking treament abroad. The patiens could see their care plan in the mobile application and make videoconference with their doctor or care team member when needed.

The head of jury Oskari Vesterinen from Laurea University of Applied Sciences said that: „Undecisives had a holistic approach and they used plenty of tools coherently to make their solution. They had a good pitch and their solution has best potential. All in all, all the teams recognised the problem well and worked great together in limited time available. So they also had a can-do attitude with critical thinking!“

We also asked Samuel Kivikari, student from Laurea University of Applied about his impressions about the week:

„Positive side of the muddie week was, that you were able to meet new interesting people from different countries with different backgrounds. Also, I gained growth in leadership & management on some level. As a feedback, there should be a bit more qualifications regarding the participation of this course in order to get more students that are willing to participate with all their heart. In the end I would say that Muddie week was an experience which led to a personal growth while receiving more information about the digitization that is taking place in every field of our lives.“

Asko Mononen, senior lecturer on digital service design at Laurea University of Applied Sciences and one of the program developers and coaches said that:

„We all have read the statistics on aging societies and exploding health care budgets in Europe. Many of us has checked the statistics on digitalization and e.g. media usage – e.g. in Finland practically everyone below 55 years old are in internet. The use of mobile devices has surpassed desktop usage in many countries. Since the population is living longer and longer every year, we need to focus more on preventive care and digitalization of health care services. Also, the accuracy of technology is on rise with lowering cost, rise of artificial intelligence and machine learning and other digital revolutions are here, already today or latest “tomorrow. Health care sector on average is not the forerunner in technology adoption, so the need for change is growing rapidly. Student need to be able to survive and contribute in this new world. This was the second round we ran this multiprofessional development program between Estonia, Finland and Latvia. Within next year we will proceed on same road, expanding the coverage on students, staff and local partners. We will have tens of thesis coming out and couple of publications are in baking. We want to stabilize this competence and regional digital health and wellbeing development “platform” with continuously updating content to be operational in Baltic region“