IC Health successfully initiated: Surveys of digital health literacy in selected Baltic Sea Region countries on the way

The H2020 funded project IC Health: Improving digital health literacy in Europe held its official kick-off meeting 23 – 24^th of January in Santa Cruz de Tenerife.

Peter Frank, General Secretary of ScanBalt and representing ScanBalt in the project says “To fully benefit from new technologies it is crucial to enhance EU citizens’ skills on how to search, understand and appraise online health information.

At the same time it is a pre-condition for the uptake of new innovative solutions and enlargement of the market.

We see IC Health as an important contribution to a digital agenda for the Baltic Sea Region/Northern Europe”.

The project coordinated by Gobierno De Canarias in particular will design 35 open access online courses (MOOCs), in seven different national languages, for different population cohorts including children, adolescents, pregnant and lactating women, elderly and people affected or susceptible to be affected by type 1 and type 2 diabetes.

The identified population cohorts, along with health professionals, academics and other practitioners, will be organized in Communities of Practice and involved directly in the co-creation of the MOOCs content and structure.

In the Baltic Sea Region/Northern Europe Denmark, Estonia, Germany and Netherlands are targets for the project initiating with surveying the digital health literacy levels in the various population cohorts.

Towards the summer 2017 national coordinators for Communities of Practises will be installed promoting co-creation and testing of the MOOCs. Members of ScanBalt are expected to support the project in the role of survey partners and national coordinators.