On Friday 7th February 2020, the Sapienza University of Rome organised an international conference on "Innovative Medical Education in the Digital Era" in collaboration with its Research Centre STITCH: Sapienza information-based Technology InnovaTion Center for Health. The event aimed to create an interdisciplinary group focused on improving the academic curricula and methodologies with the rise of new technologies in health and medicine.
New technologies such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, machine learning, and educational software are drastically transforming the way students learn but they are also shaking up the role of educators, creating philosophical shifts in approaches to teaching. Their role is not only to be pedagogical but also to be able to integrate digital tools in their teaching. Being an expert in a specific academic field is no longer sufficient.
To address those challenges, La Sapienza University of Rome organised a conference on Innovation in Medical Education to improve systems and curricula in order to provide students with the knowledge and tools necessary to face the emerging digital transformation in health and medicine.
The event brought together professors, medical doctors and experts in medical education and new technologies from CIVIS partner universities as well as from the University of Maastricht, Sechenov University and the University of Gothenburg.
The event was organised over 3 main areas:
- Technology transforming medical education
- Simulation in medical education
- Ethical issues in medical education & medical humanities
Prof. Sebastiano Filetti, Coordinator of the STITCH Scientific Committee qualified this initiative as being “a starting point to reflect on how this emerging scenario is shaping our world and how it will influence that in the near future. We need to discuss it and prepare ourselves for current and future challenges, which require us to find a balance between rapidly evolving systems, high consumer expectations and organizational limits."
STITCH - Sapienza informationbased Technology InnovaTion Center for Health is an interdepartmental research center. Stitch aims at encouraging and increasing, by interdisciplinary integration, common research projects among departments, allowing the access to funding sources through the competitive advantage obtained by departments integration on complex instruments and/or laboratories management in the following fields: internal medicine; radiological, oncological and anatomical pathological sciences; information science and technologies; miniaturization, sensors, artificial intelligence and other departments areas of expertise.