Institute of Biomechanics (IBV) organizes the midterm meeting of the ToHealth initiative that will take place next 21st october. This is a project co-funded by the European Commission under the Lifelong Learning Programme, that aims to develop an Online training course in biomechanics, medical devices and related European regulation. The main objectives of the meeting are to review the integration and adaptation of training contents and the progress in the development of the telematics course.
Due to the crisis impact on the traditional manufacturing sector (the manufacturing sector employs 35 million people in the EU), manufacturing companies must find new markets with products with a higher added value. One of these sectors is the Healthcare Technology. In this sector, companies can develop new healthcare products with high added value by applying the knowledge and expertise of their sector of origin. In order to successfully diversify to that sector and to do it in a relatively short period of time, one of the key points is the training of companies’ staff in three main topics: Medical Devices regulation (EC Directives, Standards, etc.), basic knowledge regarding human body biomechanics, and knowledge regarding medical devices (biomaterials, joint prosthesis, fracture repair, etc.).
Moreover, due to the continuous changes in the medical device regulations (EC Directives, standards), is necessary to provide training in these issues to the staff of those companies which are already in the healthcare technology sector.
The expected outcomes of the project are:
- Course contents for Germany, Spain, Poland, and Italy in their respective languages and adapted to the needs of their respective company profile.
- E-learning courses available through an e-learning platform.
- Dissemination materials in different supports and media.
Achieving expected results will lead to higher competitiveness of the European medical industry, in which 500.000 people are employed by 22.500 medtech companies (80% are SMEs) with numbers expected to rise.
The partners of the consortium are: Instituto de Biomecanica de Valencia (Spain), Tecno-med Ingenieros (Spain), Federación Española de Empresas de Tecnología Sanitaria (Spain), University d’Annunzio New Enterprise Technology (Italy), and Danmar Computers (Poland).
