Higher Education – Drivers of social innovation
Project reference:
2023-1-H301-KA220-HED-000161576
Project eSleep_dHealth will transform 3 European universities into drivers of social innovations in the field of digital healthcare and digital sleep medicine.
Students will engage in the co-design of social innovation interventions with the elderly population, a vulnerable group that is lagging behind in benefiting from the rapid development of digital medicine. To achieve true co-creation of social innovation, the digital literacy of the vulnerable group needs to be increased.
Project Objectives
Increase the inter-connectedness of 3 partner universities through a joint training program.
Improve the capacity of project partner universities to foster social innovation competencies in their students and staff.
Train students of medical and engineering professions to become drivers of social innovation to reduce prevalent harsh consequences of sleep disorders.
Boost competencies of the teaching staff and students in open learning pedagogy and design thinking for curriculum and content design.
Contribute to mitigating growing digital divide mostly affecting elderly population and population in remote areas.
Lay the foundation for a joint master program among the partner universities dealing with digital medicine and sleep disorders.
Innovative Training Programmes
Project partners will co-design, pilot, assess, and disseminate innovative higher education training programmes in inclusive digital healthcare focused on digital solutions in sleep medicine for prevention, diagnosis, and therapy.
Digital literacy content will be designed to support the wider community in collaboration with students. Teacher training in open pedagogy, design thinking, and fostering social innovation will boost the competencies of staff at partner universities.
Inter-University Social Innovation Incubator
A new curriculum and open educational resources on digital sleep medicine, incorporating the latest research data, will be created. Furthermore, a Social Innovation Toolkit for Digital Sleep Medicine will be developed, which will be a step-by-step guide to support the transformation of higher education institutions into drivers of social innovation.
Finally, an inter-university interdisciplinary social innovation incubator on digital health for sleep medicine, focused on supporting vulnerable societal groups, will be piloted.