In Denmark as well as in the other European Member States, we observe significant developments in the welfare and health technology area. At the same time, we are facing the paradox that investments are only used marginally in the Western world. Experts point out that we are in a situation where the medical-technological latitude is being overtaking by the financial latitude. We can do much more technologically than the budgets and the political will allow. Perhaps this is the reasons why we observe initial, enthusiastic investments in hardware, while a lot of welfare technology remains unused in care facilities, training centres or home care units. Thus, we observe significant investments in hardware and well as human competences, but in spite of many good initiatives, there is a major problem in connection with implementation. Many technology investments are neither really put to practical use nor integrated into the practical care work. We observe good education and training of the healthcare employees, which is not turned into real competences and better services for the citizens based on practice changes in the workplaces, because the organisation is not geared to render useful and use the increase in knowledge. We also observe a lack of methods and experiences that can be used to work with the 'long-haul' practice changes through organisation and competence development. It is this 'waste' of resources that the project wants to formulate a solution to by exchanging models for how we can make practice-oriented (cross-border) training activities that can turn employees in relationship professions into promoters of technology change. By exchanging best practices among the participating partner countries and development of concepts for good integration between education and workplace on welfare innovation, project will create a solid foundation for future improvements. Welfare innovation in this project will work with solutions in relation to: - Creating a strong connection between what a student/participant learns during an education and training course and the learning in practice/practice implementation that takes place at a workplace. - Identifying the central learning targets that a learning programme within welfare innovation must fulfil. In this respect, we specifically wish to formulate three learning targets for welfare innovation, which can become joint guidelines for EU countries and part of the existing framework for practice goals. - First and foremost, this applies to learning targets for students and participants. The project will also identify the learning targets for employees at the VET colleges. - The project will demonstrate a number of model concepts for good teaching that can develop these learning targets. The model concepts will be based on the experiences that exist in the participating partner countries and present templates/concepts for new and sector-crossing learning. The model concepts will present concepts for learning in a binding and transgressing interaction between educational sector and workplace.
The aim of the EC EUVET project was to exchange good practices within the field of innovative thinking and welfare technology (WFT) in the Social Health Care (S&H) sector as an answer to the common European paradox that we identified at the application stage; Many technology investments are neither really put to practical use nor integrated into the practical care work. We identified a need for practical inputs and experiences in order to optimize the use of technology and innovation in the sector and ultimately help to a better service for the citizens. With 8 partners from different countries we had a broad foundation to secure various strengths and experiences in the field. Therefore, the learning activities in the project focused on sharing best practice and gather all the ideas on an easily accessible platform so that as many people as possible can benefit from it. The partner countries are Finland, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Greece, Belgium, The Netherlands and Denmark. The partners represent different levels of development and use of innovative methods and WFT which has shown to be a strength as we learned a lot from each other because of the differences both in cultural approach and technical resources. As the EC EUVET project builds on the fact that although remarkable resources are invested in hardware and human competences a lot of WFT remains unused, a survey was prepared for both managers and employees at hospitals and elderly care centers in the partner countries in order to identify some of the reasons for this. The overall conclusion behind the small study shows that innovation and technology have come to stay in the H&S sector but, in addition to the already good education that young students receive, concrete inputs to translate knowledge into practice are lacking. The results of the exchange of best practice in this project serve as a tool to encounter some of these gaps. It provides relevant links to inspirational materials and specific project weeks reports that serve as catalogues with inputs to innovative methods and ideas for best use of WFT. Furthermore, we formulated a learning target focusing on WFT for VET students - it is accessible for everyone, who find it usable. As this was in fact an add-on (learning target number 8) to a former European KA2 project, it was decided to only develop one new learning target rather than creating a joint guideline for EU countries as originally planned in the application. The learning target can be found on the Facebook profile: “EC EUVET – Healthcare – welfare technology and innovation”: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1540965615959912/permalink/3051801324876326/. You can also find the corresponding assessment sheet: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1540965615959912/permalink/3051815138208278/ The target group of the project has mainly been teachers in the S&H sector, when it comes to the learning activities. In total, 73 mobilities were used for Learning and teaching activities (LTAs), and 38 mobilities for transnational project meetings (TPMs). The LTAs included lectures of innovative methods and technologies, executed by both internal and external speakers as well as many study visits to facilities, where new and/or innovative technologies were either developed or taken in to use. The participants got the opportunity to test on the spot a variety of welfare technologies, and to find a lot of inspiration that could be transferred to their own schools and finally as result of training of students, to the work places. That is, several stakeholders have taken part in the project as intermediaries of relevant topics and knowledge: representatives of management in the S&H sector, municipalities, VET innovation and research centers as well as representatives from technological development companies. The project has thus managed to reach out to other stakeholders beyond the project managers, both due to the interaction in the learning activities but also because of the survey and – not least - due to the platform that we chose to use for dissemination. The plan was originally to create a web page for sharing the results, but it was at an early stage of the project decided to create a Facebook profile instead (in the following named as FB profile), with the purpose to create a more dynamic, open source platform for sharing internationally know-how among all schools, dealing with welfare educations. For each LTA a report with summaries of each event, including presentations of materials, lectures and photos was created and uploaded under “files” https://www.facebook.com/groups/1540965615959912/files. This is the main result that we want to draw attention to as it is the essence of all project results. The FB group had at time of finalization of project 527 members from participating partners and from other schools in the health and welfare educational sector. We believe the platform will provide good opportunities for longer-term benefits.