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Equipping students for the future healthcare system

STEM4Health develops new learning pathways and teaching approaches designed to attract more students to healthcare study programmes and support them in completing their studies. At the same time, the project equips future healthcare professionals with the skills needed for a healthcare system in which technology plays an increasingly important role.

Technological solutions are becoming an integral part of healthcare practice.

As a result, it is essential that future healthcare professionals learn how to use technology to improve treatment, care and patient pathways. This is a core ambition of STEM4Health.

The project is led by UCL University College in collaboration with UCN, UC SYD, the University of Southern Denmark (SDU TEK) and a range of partners from the education and healthcare sectors.

A changing healthcare system

Healthcare systems must find new ways to meet the needs of a growing number of patients while facing shortages of healthcare professionals. As a consequence, technology and digital solutions are playing an increasingly important role in future treatment, care and rehabilitation tasks.

“STEM4Health is an important step towards future-proofing a healthcare system that will rely on technological solutions to meet the challenges of the years to come, with fewer healthcare professionals and more patients. We must do more than educate a greater number of healthcare professionals. We must prepare them for a working life in which technology and digital solutions are a natural part of everyday practice,” says Kim Bøg-Jensen, Director of Health Programmes at UCL.

A key element of the project is therefore to enhance the students’ STEM competencies in areas such as technology, innovation and interdisciplinary collaboration.

STEM4Health develops new pathways into health education programmes while strengthening the competencies required by the healthcare system of the future.

From classroom to clinical practice

STEM4Health develops a range of initiatives, including onboarding programmes for prospective students, simulation-based learning in collaboration with clinical practice, and interdisciplinary teaching activities that bring together students across programmes and professional fields.

The aim is to provide students with hands-on experience of the technologies and workflows they will encounter in practice, while making teaching more authentic.

“The healthcare system of the future requires professionals who can combine strong clinical competencies with an understanding of technology, innovation and interdisciplinary collaboration.

STEM4Health enables us to develop teaching approaches in which students work with real-world challenges in close partnership with practice and across professional disciplines,” explains Diana Schack Thoft, Research Manager at UCN’s Research Centre for Health and Applied Technology.

The project is based on close collaboration between educational institutions, research environments and clinical partners, ensuring that new teaching approaches are developed and tested in dialogue with the people and organisations that will ultimately use them.