Abstract
Multidisciplinary cooperation is required to develop digital health and welfare services. The aim of this article is to determine the eHealth and eWelfare service design competences that multidisciplinary students need to be able to develop digital services in health and social care. A secondary aim is to develop a measurement tool based on the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) curriculm for future assessment of such competences.
 Based on basic descriptive statistics results show that most students felt they have good skills in e-communication, basic IT, literature retrieval and research methods; some students, however, reported that they lack these basic skills. It is crucial that instructors be aware of student variations so that they can support the learning of the basics and further the biomedical and health informatics (BMHI) and design thinking (DT) competences.
 Principal components analysis (PCA) was used to determine the principal components (PC) from measured responses to BMHI and DT sections. Data were collected from 64 students. The components were explored and compared to constructs used to design the original measurement tool. A twenty-component structure showed the simplest solution and explained (80%, 68%, 73%) of variances in BMHI and 83% DT competences, respectively, in the measurement tool, each part of which was analysed by PCA. The PC can be the core areas in different professions taking part in developing eHealth and eWelfare.
 The parts of measurement tools relied on item reliability and content validity testing. This study provided a base for further measurement tool revision and theoretical testing.
Highlights
Digital health and social care services play key roles in improving care and increasing patients’ levels of engagement in their own care
The biomedical and health informatics (BMHI) standardized curriculum for health and Information Technology (IT) professionals developed by the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) is known worldwide [8,9,10]
The questionnaire consisted of three parts: Background (14 scale variables), Biomedical and Health Informatics (BMHI; 72 scale variables) and Design Thinking Competences (DTC;10 scale variables)
Summary
Digital health and social care services play key roles in improving care and increasing patients’ levels of engagement in their own care. There needs to be worldwide changes to coordinate quality health services with universal access [1] as well as strong guidelines from national policy makers [2]. Professional associations need to consider the need for multidisciplinary development work and support professionals to take part in it [3,4]. Since 1995, the European Computer Driving License (ECDL) has provided a worldwide format for information communication technology (ICT) skills and general knowledge to all professionals at different educational levels [7]. Bachelor degree students are willing to work together in multidisciplinary groups, but educators need to coordinate such programmes [20]. It is challenging to develop multidisciplinary teams and discussion is needed about roles and the need to accept plurality in order to meet the aim and respond to the needs of patients [21]
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