<< Background >>The “Beyond the Emergency. Telecare for Non-Communicable Diseases through Simulation Techniques- BeEmTel” project was created as a response to the recent pandemic. Covid-19 revealed weaknesses in the health-care system, especially in connection with the care of fragile patients, and in the training system, which remains unable to tackle the important challenge of reforming the ways that patients are treated and monitored. By 2050, in Europe, the proportion of older adults will most likely double from 11% to 22% of the total population. Several diseases are associated with a progressive reduction in functional capacity, leading to a persistent need for care over time. At the European level, these diseases account for roughly 80% of the causes of mortality in people over 65. Most Non-Communicable Diseases (henceforth NCDs) are deeply connected with aging. NCDs include type 2 diabetes, obesity, respiratory and heart disease, and dementia, to name a few. They are gaining increasing interest in the EU due to their impact on early mortality, as well as on the levels of social and economic assistance they require around the world, and especially on the European continent. Efforts to contain the Covid-19 pandemic raised the need to improve the quality of care for patients with NCDs and mitigate the impact for patients, their families and society. To guarantee constant and high-quality support for NCD patients, family members and caregivers, medical assistance will be increasingly decentralized at a territorial level, even more so in the post-Covid era. Fostering the decentralization of medical facilities through an extensive health-care network – made potentially manageable thanks to innovative technological tools – could provide a practical solution, which has already been put into practice in some European regions. It is envisioned that the new profile of a health and social care professional will include additional advanced skills. For example, physicians, nurses, psychologists and psychiatrists will require multidisciplinary training that includes digital skills and more specific practical/clinical competencies. Health and social care must aim to provide continuous assistance at the local level for managing patients with chronic conditions. Given the main gaps highlighted in the G20 digital health report of December 2020, it is time to strengthen specialist training courses for additional skills so that NCD patients can be taken care of with telemedicine support at the European level. In such a challenging context, the BeEmTel Partnership is convinced that there is an urgent need to promote strategies for improving teaching methods in the clinical practice, both face-to-face and remote. This is essential in order to meet the needs and continuous attention required by the most fragile subjects with NCDs as well as address the need for support by family members and caregivers. The pandemic crisis accelerated the adoption of distance simulation (i.e., Live Simulation and Clinical Observation Scenarios Online), making an inclusive and high-quality multidisciplinary training possible for a variety of recipients with social and economic difficulties, educational differences, and physical impairments.BeEmTel complies with the requirements of the 2021-2027 Digital Education Action Plan, as digital technology, together with innovative education programmes, can help prepare undergraduate students and future professionals to develop advanced digital and technological skills.<< Objectives >>The BeEmTel Partnership’s main objective is to create an innovative European curriculum dedicated to Telecare for Non-Communicable Diseases through educational tools based on remote (and face-to-face) simulation techniques. Healthcare simulation, one of the best pedagogical tools for medical education, consists of techniques aimed at reproducing emergency medical situations in a secure teaching/learning environment. Healthcare Simulation promotes and enhances a multidisciplinary and multi-professional approach; The BeEmTel Partnership believes that distance simulation techniques - like Telesimulation - should already be implemented by graduating level students. Telesimulation is one of the various simulation experiences created by the simulation community. It refers to a new teaching methodology whereby telecommunication and Healthcare Simulation are combined in order to provide effective educational support. A Telesimulation event is designed to represent a simulated telemedicine meeting, and it may also refer to distance-based learning opportunities for “off-campus” simulated training. In this way, BeEmTel aims at providing innovative education that can be available to learners from various disciplines. The BeEmTel training project has the ambitious goal of meeting the new healthcare needs, which will undergo a profound shift in the future. Introducing innovative educational methods is one of the main, shared aims behind the higher education e-Course. This goal is achievable for the medium- and long-term, even beyond the end of the course and availability of European funds.From the learners’ perspective, the role of simulation in healthcare education is to transition an academic learner to a practising clinician. This is a complex development process, of course, so the best way to direct such a transition is to consider the stages a clinical learner goes through to become more competent. BeEmTel undertakes a formative clinical distance simulation that assumes the beneficiaries are still learning, in a process that is lengthy, elaborate, and marked by milestones. In this first stage of learning, which includes the medical, psychological and technical basics, simulation methodology simplifies the concepts and demonstrates the impact of basic decisions on patient outcomes. Specifically, beneficiaries will directly experience and study the use of digital telemedicine platforms to support disease management. The strength and innovation of BeEmTel lie in already providing some of these specialised skills in basic training. The aim is to disseminate theoretical and applied knowledge through high fidelity simulations, thanks to the use of dedicated digital platforms. Such knowledge will be useful for developing a new clinical and decision-making approach as future professionals. In fact, BeEmTel will allow beneficiaries to already start gaining high-quality knowledge in order to manage health challenges as potential future professionals. Soft skills are crucial to tackling such a challenge because, due to the progressive increase in the ageing population, digital assistance will soon become one of the main forms of care. Practical teaching based on repeated simulation sessions has been shown to foster knowledge acquisition and self-assess technical skills. The BeEmTel Partnership envisions that potential learners could also become the software engineers of tomorrow, who will have to devise new AI-based communication systems in order to continue their university and working careers. All of these elements are necessary ingredients for pursuing a career in the health-care sector.<< Implementation >>The BeEmTel Partnership is composed of 7 partners (5 Countries), including 5 University institutions and 2 National Public bodies, as follows: the University of Eastern Piedmont (UPO) as organisation leader (Italy), Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Muenchen (LMU) (Germany), University of Thessaly (UTH) (Greece), Zdravstveno veleučilište (UAH) (Croatia), George Emil Palade University of Medicine, Pharmacy, Science, and Technology of Târgu Mureş (UTM) (Romania), the National Telemedicine Centre (NCT), technical-scientific operational area of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS) (Italy), and the Department for Emergency Situations (DSU), within the Romanian Ministry of Internal Affairs (Romania). The main purpose of BeEmTel is to create an innovative European curriculum dedicated to Telecare for Non-Communicable Diseases through a teaching practice based on remote and face-to-face simulation techniques. Training includes an e-Course (80 hours) and live simulation techniques during two LTTA experiences (C1 and C2), in Novara at the UPO Simnova Centre and in Munich at the HSC LMU (additional 80 hours). During the implementation of BeEmTel, which is specifically customised for learners – undergraduate students from several disciplinary fields (nursing, medicine, psychology, psychiatry, engineers) – open virtual conferences (three virtual multiplier events) and two in-person multiplier events will be held with the collaboration of diverse European Associated Partners (as stakeholders). The course will take place through a digital platform, which will also include didactic materials (from papers to downloadable video lessons), short video tutorials, and the Transferability Toolkit, a tool that houses information regarding all the e-Course activities and LTTAs. The e-Course will be realised in English and the languages of countries where there is active learner involvement.In order to structure the training course, needs analyses will take place on several levels. The process of mapping needs related to the care and assistance of patients with chronic diseases will allow us to understand the training gap to be addressed and which elements to include in creating an appropriate curriculum.The multidisciplinary BeEmTel e-Course is aimed at a particular sector of the health and social care workforce that is undergoing profound and rapid change, mainly due to the pandemic crisis. The dynamic growth of a health and social care job is particularly amenable to introducing new technological tools that future social and healthcare assistants will have to master in order to manage NCD patients and their caregivers. The ability to use teleconferencing to broadcast a simulation across geographical barriers promotes an active learning of realistic scenarios and conditions, without the need of being physically present in the sim lab room. The e-Course will take place in a virtual training space that allows for communication between future professionals and sick and disadvantaged people. During a Telesimulation learning module, participants will immerse themselves in a simulated scenario and engage within the scope of the lesson.Furthermore, the LTTA activities will be planned to encourage the participatory and interactive engagement of all beneficiaries (50 learners, selected from a total of 250 participants), who will be involved in interdisciplinary activities as a class group, in small groups, and individually.<< Results >>We expect BeEmTel to have 5 project results.PR 1. Outline the curriculum for the management of chronic conditions through Telemedicine. Thanks to the literary review and a Delphi study, the BeEmTel Partnership will be able to identify the skills needed for chronic care management through the use of telemedicine. The Partnership will then define the main topic areas and learning outcomes to be translated into the planning of the e-Course and training modules. PR 2. Design the training and create the content for the modules of the “European course on management of chronic conditions through Telemedicine.” The final organisation of the modules’ contents will entail the allocation of teachers, preparation of didactic materials (including video lessons and learning tools), and the recruitment of participants from degree courses such as medicine, nursing, psychology, and engineering. PR 3. Create the digital platform for the e-Course. The digital platform ensures that all participants can access materials in English, Italian, Hungarian, Greek, Romanian, and German. The BeEmTel digital platform will house material in several languages and be a virtual hub under constant monitoring: from online lessons, to handouts in the various European languages, to participant enrolment, to forums for peer discussion and questions for teachers and tutors (who will be assigned to each module, for each country). The platform will also host the project’s virtual multiplier events.PR 4. Deliver the training course through e-Learning modules and contents – testing the pilot e-Course. To ensure equal and high-quality learning, participants will carry out an evaluation at the end of each module. Strengths and weaknesses will be identified by means of a phase including project follow-up and evaluation of the learning process effectiveness, so that any corrective measures required can be made. The LTTA workshops at UPO and LMU (C1 and C2) represent an educational challenge for teachers and an intense training experience for participants. Here the participants have the chance to enjoy being at the heart of pedagogical medical simulation. PR 4 involves an evaluation of the curriculum and skills acquired during the e-Course and LTTAs. Starting from the European Classification of Qualifications, Competencies, Skills and Occupations (ESCO, EQF), the Europass tool will be used as a reference framework to evaluate the training curriculum.PR 5. Create the Transferability Digital Toolkit (TDT), including educational resources of international best case studies and good practices. The TDT aims to support those working and participating in the design, training, management, development, delivery and promotion of learning about chronicity, telemedicine and simulation. The TDT will present tools, models, best practices, and clinical case studies related to chronic care management using innovative technology and digital media. BeEmTel will make the TDT available for free to the European community and Research Centres.Concrete goals of BeEmTel include: the course structure composed of various training modules, creation of the digital platform, its sustainability after the end of the project, and the free and accessible TDT. Hopefully, such objectives will encourage partners within the Partnership and external institutions involved as stakeholders (University Departments, local Hospitals, National and European Associations in Simulation, Nursing, and other organisations reported in Associated Partners section) to take on the pilot course and translate its strengths into educational measures. In fact, the BeEmTel Partnership expects the e-Course to promote change and an acceleration toward better continuing training, including theoretical and practical medical knowledge, for undergraduate students and early career professionals.