Medical students complete Erasmus+ health-informatics project in Salerno, Italy

Two Medical School students, Alexis Tripodis (Year 4, pictured right) and Aswinshankar Sivalingam (Year 3, centre), have recently returned from an Erasmus+ Blended Intensive Programme (BIP) on personal healthcare data management at the University of Salerno, Italy, delivered under the NEOLAiA alliance. They joined peers from eight European universities on the Fisciano campus from 24–28 June after two weeks of online classes. Another UNIC participant, Michalis Marcoux from the School of Science and Engineering (pictured left), also took part.

The virtual phase covered security and privacy in health-data handling, XML communication protocols, ethical considerations and the creation of JSON documents. ‘I came in with almost no computer background, yet the sessions were eye-opening. They boosted my digital literacy in medicine and proved rewarding’, Tripodis said.

On campus the cohort formed multidisciplinary teams of six  to design a patient-data platform that meets EU regulations. Sivalingam, who produced the UML and sequence diagrams for his group, noted: ‘I had to think like a computer scientist. It revealed the subtle complexity beneath systems we usually take for granted in clinical work’.

Lecturers from medicine, computer science and law guided the students, but much of the learning came from one another. ‘Working with classmates from different countries and disciplines expanded my problem-solving toolkit’, Sivalingam added. Tripodis agreed, pointing out that the range of perspectives ‘showed how people with varied training can solve a clinical problem together’.

Study was balanced with cultural exploration. After classes the students visited Salerno’s seafront, the mountain-ringed Fisciano campus and the Amalfi coast.

Completion of the BIP is worth three ECTS credits.