Citizens' digital health literacy is an essential element for successful eHealth deployment. However, citizens often do not have the necessary skills to find, understand and appraise online health information and apply their knowledge to make health decisions. Digitally health literate citizens are empowered to play a more active role in their health self-management, resulting in improved prevention, adherence to a healthier lifestyle and better health outcomes. IC-Health will provide support for the improvement of digital health literacy in Europe. In particular, the project 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 organised in Communities of Practice and involved directly in the co-creation of the MOOCs content and structure. Once the courses are be designed, they will be tested by the members of the CoPs and by other users. MOOCs use and impact will be monitored and assessed in order to ensure their uptake and sustainability beyond the duration of the project.

In the face of a rapidly advancing digital healthcare terrain, the DTRIP4H project emerges as a momentous effort to revolutionize predictive, preventive, personalized, and participatory health paradigms within the EU. Amid significant incidence of chronic conditions and cancer, there is a pressing need for a proactive shift in health strategies. Yet, the full potential of European research infrastructures (RIs) is curtailed by investment deficits, fragmentation, and the intricacies of data management. Digital Twin (DT) technology introduces a new age of precision by enabling sophisticated simulations and analyses of intricate biological processes. In DTRIP4H, we start a new initiative in Europe “decentralized health digital twin ecosystem consisting of RIs”. Using DTs, we aim to resolve critical challenges around data harmonization, equitable access, and stringent privacy safeguards. Incorporating technologies such as federated learning, Generative AI, and Virtual Reality (VR), the project aspires to create a decentralized digital twin environment (DDTE). This will empower both internal and external RI users, such as researchers, innovators, and SMEs, to craft DT applications that address specific scientific challenges, utilizing a blend of real-world and synthetic data in compliance with regulatory frameworks, i.e. GDPR. We will develop 7 innovative proof of concept thematic health-related Use cases fulfilling the needs of scientists, SMEs, and industrial end users, particularly in health topics related to cancer treatment, drug development, human environmental exposome, precision treatment for schizophrenia and personalized medicine through Artificial Intelligence (AI), AR/VR empowered DTs utilizing DDTE, while adhering to FAIR data principles. DTRIP4H adopts a human-centric methodology to elevate research efficacy, narrow the skills gap, and align with the objectives of the European Research Area (ERA) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.

PREVENT improves upscaling of primary interventions for weight control management during childhood and adolescence to reduce cancer risks in adulthood. This relies on current evidence that relates excess body weight with increased cancer risk. Towards this end, PREVENT applies a series of implementation research actions in the following directions. First, it identifies barriers to current interventions and policies preventing them from upscaling to different geographical, socio-economic, and cultural settings. Then, it introduces new multi-actor and context-aware interventions along with new user engagement strategies to face the current upscaling bottlenecks; multi-actor in the sense that they target different types of users (e.g., students, family, educators, policymakers) and context-aware in the sense that PREVENT interventions are tailored to the specific implementation places (class, canteen, sports fields, labs, outside school). The PREVENT new policies are adapted, piloted, and scaled up within the schools’ communities of three European countries facing different epidemiological settings on childhood obesity, geographic, socio-economic and cultural attributes. The pilots are designed to be holistic end-to-end ecosystems, including users, medical professionals, policymakers, public authorities, and civil communities. They focus on the whole school communities of Greece, Sweden, and Spain-Catalonia, that is, PREVENT outreach to more than 3.3 million students, required for guideline provisioning, large-scale implementation, multi-parameter assessment, and scaling-up. Co-creation, active behavioral change, self-evaluation through user empowerment, motivational interviewing, social innovation, digital-assistive engagement, health apps, and multi-domain assessment are implementation research aspects of PREVENT to advance user acceptability and compatibility with existing policies, and thus improve sustainability and upscaling. This action is part of the Cancer Mission cluster of projects on "Prevention and Early Detection".

In order to strengthen the sustainability and resilience of health services and systems a unique consortium of governmental and funding organizations plus research institutes, has expressed the ambition to systematically learn from the organisation of care in other settings. Overall objective of TO-REACH is to provide groundwork for a future joint research programme that will contribute to the resilience, effectiveness, equity, accessibility and comprehensiveness of health services and systems. We will do so along two work streams: A) We will develop a research program on cross-border learning from good (or even innovative) models of care and the conditions needed to transfer them to other settings for implementation. It could refer to anywhere in the care chain depending on the priorities as identified in a Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) within this project. Conceptual, methodological and empirical advancement will be achieved through 4 meta-questions that will instruct research under a future joint research programme, linking to what counts as good models of care, what are the conditions required for transferability, what are the conditions for up-scaling, and how do they contribute to the performance of health care organisations and systems. B) We will build a platform for funding organizations that allows for collaboration and coordination in the project and projected joint research programme. This will synchronize priorities and activities, hence improving the quality and applicability of research with a focus on the topic areas as described under A. TO-REACH will pursue five specific objectives: Mapping health system challenges and priorities by synthesizing different materials and stakeholder inputs; Developing a framework and providing a knowledge synthesis on the above-mentioned meta-questions; Establishing sustainable cooperation of research funding bodies and links with other initiatives; Developing a SRA through agenda setting at European and Member State level; Disseminating the results of TO-REACH.

The sustainability of the European health care sector is challenged by 6 mega trends and as a consequence, the health care sector has for several years been undergoing major changes becoming increasingly digitalized, streamlined and focused on more staff and patient involvement and patient responsibility, in order to gain maximum quality in care, patient safety, efficiency, and at the same time stay economically sustainable.EUVECA is designed to support the needed innovation and development of the health care sector, by ensuring the provision of future oriented skills within the sector. This will be done through the creation of Regional Vocational Excellence Hubs in 7 European regions, which collaborate within a European Platform for Vocational Excellence in Health Care. The objective is to ensure coordination, adaption, innovation and upward convergence within regional health education eco systems, as well as promoting European (blended) mobility and inter regional learning and collaboration among health care professionals and students from the participating regions. EUVECA will show that by including a strategic and coordinated focus on VET in the work and collaboration within the regional health eco-systems, VET can contribute in a substantial way to move innovation forward within the European health care sector and ensure the sustainability of the sector on both a European and regional level. EUVECA will be implemented by a multi-disciplinary consortium of professionals, academics, local and regional health authorities, regional development agencies and social partners. Within 8 work packages, the partners and their regional stakeholders will co-create a governance model, as well as concrete education and training activities for the 7 regional hubs and the European platform will be developed, tested, fine-tuned and made sustainable for uptake of regional partnerships beyond the partnership.