Education

The implementation of an e-learning platform to educate professionals to use telerehabilitation apparatuses is worldwide recognised as a key action for the successful implementation of telerehabilitation services. Within the CLEAR project a section of the Habilis web platform is dedicated to the Educational Area – accessible by privileges, work still in progress. The two main objectives of this key-action are:

• to deliver web-based learning to educate administrators, clinicians, operators and even patients in the use of the proposed telerehabilitation service;
• to serve as a technical guidance and assistance during the project.

The teaching modules and structure have been designed in order to approach different and complex issues at different levels. The final offer will allow the “student” to look for the most adequate level he/she has to learn about a specific topic.
Basically, four modules have been defined which respectively deal with:

• Clinical issues;
• Technical issues;
• CE Mark of Medical Devices;
• Health Technology Assessment (HTA).

Each module is designed to contain not only traditional teaching materials, but also interactive and more attractive tools.
Each module is based on a structure of 6 sections plus a general introduction, a preliminary questionnaire, a glossary and a final survey:

Clinical Module

Based on the expertise of the clinical partners involved in the project, this module aims at delivering basic concepts related to neuropsychological rehabilitation and, more specifically, to rehabilitation applied to the pathologies the CLEAR project deal with, and to well illustrate new approaches and potentialities of telerehabilitation.

Technical Module

The module is intended as both a teaching module and a repository for information to be used for o-line assistance. It is thus tailored to deliver an adequately detailed description of the Tele-Rehabilitation Service and all the main equipment and the software it relies on.

CE Mark Module

According to the EU Directives, all medical devices should, as a general rule, bear the CE mark to indicate their conformity with the provisions of those Directives to enable them to move freely within the Community and to be put into service in accordance with their intended purpose.
The Italian National Institute of Health, also a Notified Body for CE certification of Medical Devices, collected and tailored some relevant material useful for a first approach to such complex and critical issue, with a special view to applications in the field of ICT in Medicine.

HTA Module

Health Technology Assessment —also known as Health Care Technology Assessment or Medical Technology Assessment —is a form of policy research that systematically examines short- and long-term consequences of the application of a health technology, a set of related technologies, or an issue related to technology. The teaching module mainly deals with HTA terminology, main approaches, literature review and applications to the specific field of Telerehabilitation.