HETEK4400 Digital Health and Homecare Course description

The purpose of this course is to make the students understand concepts, challenges and possibilities of digital health related to people in need of support in everyday life, or patients with chronic illness, in homecare or rehabilitation.

Digital health services comprise a complex set of technology solutions such as wearables, apps and decision support systems to assist health experts accomplish their tasks and support patients’ needs. Digital health services can be built for example for smart-homes, mobile smartphones, ambient intelligence and social networks.

Digital solutions can generate an enormous amount of data powered by platforms, algorithms, and AI technologies, providing a potent ecosystem for new digital service co-creation. AI-enabled digital health can assist healthcare experts in making individually tailored clinical decisions, enable predictive care provision, as well as facilitate efficient personalised support and improved quality of life for patients at home.

Emphasis of this course is placed on the patient's needs and how digital health services can be developed between all stakeholders (e.g. healthcare experts, individuals / patients and company representatives) in a real-life context.

Students will learn how digital healthcare has possibilities to reduce costs and create innovative and sustainable services. Ethical and regulatory aspects will be discussed.

Students must have been admitted to the Master’s Programme in Health and Technology - Specialisation in Assistive Technology in Health. The course can be taken as an elective course by students admitted to other master’s specialisations. The course is also offered as an individual course if there are vacant places. A bachelor’s degree or equivalent is required for admission to individual courses.

After completing the course, the student should have the following learning outcomes defined in terms of knowledge, skills and general competence:

Knowledge

The student

• can discuss the key concepts and state of the art development of digital health services for self-management and follow up in the case of chronic illness and home rehabilitation
• can discuss and evaluate practical examples of the digital health services for self-management and follow up in the case of chronic illness and home rehabilitation
• can discuss the potential for introducing personalised solutions and review their expected benefits according to the current clinical practice, and state-of-the-art in research and development
• can analyse challenges and opportunities related to digital health service co-creation

Skills

The student

• can identify and analyse different types of digital health services, their challenges and opportunities from different stakeholders’ perspectives (e.g. patients, health professional and company representatives)
• can discuss different types of digital health services for self-management and follow up in the case of chronical illness or home rehabilitation
• can communicate different viewpoints, challenges, opportunities and perspectives of the digital health services and their co-creation in interdisciplinary environments
• can review the availability of AI-based personalised solutions

General competence

The student

• can contribute to the co-creation of different types of digital health services for self-management and follow up in the case of chronical illness or home rehabilitation in an interdisciplinary context
• can discuss the potential of AI-based personalised solutions

The course will use varied, student-active work methods. Work and teaching methods include lectures, activating workshops, independent group work, group work presentations and self-study. Two teaching periods are organised, each running over three to four consecutive days. Between the two periods, the students will work in groups on a written assignment that they will present during the final period. The students choose their assignment from a selection of topics given in the first period.

The following must be approved in order for the student to take the exam:

• Oral presentation in groups, up to 30 minutes. The presentation must be given in English if there are English-speaking students on the course.

Individual written home exam over one week, maximum 3,000 words.

The paper can be written in English or a Scandinavian language.

All aids are permitted, as long as the rules for source referencing are complied with.

Grade scale A-F

All answers are assessed by two examiners. An external examiner is used regularly, at a minimum of every third completion of the course. When selecting answers for external evaluation, a minimum of 10 percent of the answers shall be included, with no fewer than 5 answers. The external examiner’s assessment of the selected answers shall benefit all students.

None.