Educating students for digitalized health care and coaching of their patients

The DigiCare project aims at equipping students with the preparedness of digital health care competence. The increased life expectancy, lower mortality, elimination of maternal and infant mortality, economic growth, and increased wellness challenge health care providers also in Vietnam and Bangladesh to innovate new ways to develop their health care services. Furthermore, low doctor-patient ratio and low access to health care services and on the other hand advances in telemedicine, realizing as huge increase in access to ICT and low-cost digital health services, provides an option for the improvement of people's health to health care administrators. The DigiCare model for Asia, which is developed during the project, offers an option for health care education to respond to the challenges mentioned above. It contains concrete objectives of learning digital health care for coaching individuals self-management of their health, skills and knowledge needed in digital health care and coaching, as well as best practices in health care and coaching of self-care. Digital communication skills between patients, their family members, significant others and health care professionals will form an essential part of teaching and learning objectives in education of health care students.The final target of the project is the quality care of patients. Dissemination of the project results takes place via international publications, national meetings of professionals, community events and educational events in health care organizations. The DigiCare handbook supports the implementation of teaching and learning strategies for digitalization. The DigiNurse community, a platform of professionals and experts who are interested in digital methods in nursing and health care, supports international cooperation and network as well as generation of new ideas and sustainability. The development of the DigiCare model will follow global digital advances and its modification continues.