SavingHearts: Innovative Methods and Techniques in Cardiovascular Disease Treatment Erasmus Project

Project Title

SavingHearts: Innovative Methods and Techniques in Cardiovascular Disease Treatment

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Health and wellbeing

Project Summary

Chronic diseases represent a major burden on both population health as well as the costs of healthcare systems. Europe carries the highest burden of chronic diseases which cause 86% of all deaths. Of these, cardio-vascular diseases amount for around half of all deaths in the WHO European region and impose a cost of more than € 192 billion a year on the European economy.
Classical surgical treatment represents a high risk procedure especially for patients with comorbidities, challenging the cardiovascular system and the rest of the peripheral organs. Therefore, several treatment alternatives using endovascular therapy alone or in combination with open surgery have been developed to repair these complex thoracic-abdominal aneurysms (TAAs). The general trend is toward a less invasive approach, which improves patient outcomes, recovery time and quality of life.

Thus the Saving Hearts project aimed to:
• Employ the strategic use of ICT technologies in teaching/training activities by using a telemedicine approach to create an innovative best practice environment in the form of an ICT platform where students and other practitioners had the chance to experience non-invasive surgery procedures. The procedures shown were accompanied by specialist commentary.
• Besides offering a modern way of delivering specialist education the program aimed at improving competences of students and specialists participating in the program, as the remote part of the program was accompanied by a two week ‘traineeship’ in a working hospital, where the course participants got to real life working experience accompanying the whole diagnostic process.
• The ICT platform was populated with relevant training materials, specialising on treatment of TAAs in co-morbidity cases and pediatric cases, which will be delivered as an Open Educational Resources (OER).
• SavingHearts included international student and staff mobility as means to test the outputs produced by the project, thus providing opportunities for learning mobility. The participation of both a hospital, a research center and HEIs in the project strengthened the international cooperation between these stakeholders.

By achieving the objectives above the SavingHearts project addressed the following needs:
• towards labor market: a close collaboration between HEIs and the hospital (i.e. the labor market)) will results in students who are more attuned and educated towards the requirements of the working environment and who already have a basic knowledge in non-invasive cardiologic procedures.
• on organizational level: (a) modernization of the content and the provision medium for cardiology related courses (b) high quality OERs, (b) innovative concepts for telemedicine in education with regard to cardiac surgery, (c) integration of blended learning approaches into teaching activities, (d) collaborative learning in virtual communities using ICT-based tools.
• on an individual level: (a) ability to insert oneself in the diagostic process in practice, (b) basic competences in the diagnostic process and the treatments to be delivered , (c) use of telemedicine tools and ICT in the learning process.

The composition of the consortium was based on the correspondence between the tasks to be completed and the partners’ expertise. All the project partners involved in the project have been selected according to their expertise in the field of cardiology and to their capacity of providing professional training to the target group of students to whom the project addressed, as well as their technical and financial capacity of dealing with previous projects in which they were involved.
The participating organization involved in the project, through their profile and experience, procured the necessary knowledge and skills to be acquired, so that the project was carried out with highly prepared resources. All the European partner universities had considerable experience in external academic cooperation, including student and staff mobility.

The project had an important impact on individuals by facilitating the cross-cultural dialogue and cooperation for individual participants. On an organizational level it will support the creation of innovation excellence practices with an innovative teaching and training concept and environment and foster better international cooperation in the field of cardiology, especially with focus on non-invasive surgical procedures. For Polisano hospital the strategic partnership had a great impact on strengthening the collaboration with university for the upgrading of its theoretical knowledge.As an important medical institute, the hospital can decrease the employee’s workload, by using volunteer students and providing better service to the patients. Moreover, regarding the customer satisfaction, Polisano can gain expertise through applying new methods of treatment.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 139350 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIVERSITATEA LUCIAN BLAGA DIN SIBIU & Country: RO

Project Partners

• Western Vascular Institute Ltd
• LUNDS UNIVERSITET
• SC CLINICA POLISANO SRL