AC2 Initiative – The First Step
The AC2 Committe was funded by EFMI in order to create and suitably modify a database of educational programs across Europe since study programs in the vast fields of Biomedical and Health Informatics, Medical Informatics and Health Technology is continuously growing during the recent years.
The AC2 Committee was only focused on European Universities, Colleges, and Institutions. The official website of each university or institution was carefully checked to locate educational programs in: Biomedical Informatics, Health Informatics, Medical Informatics, Medical Technology, Bioinformatics, Nursing Informatics etc.
At the present time, the educational database includes a variety of specializations at undergraduate and postgraduate level. In particular, a recording of the educational programs in the specializations of Health Informatics, Medical Informatics, Biomedical Informatics, Bioinformatics, Nursing Informatics, Dental Informatics, Health Technology, Healthcare Technology, Medical Technology, Biomedical Technology, Dental Technology, Health Engineering, Healthcare Technology, Medical Engineering, and Biomedical Engineering are included in the database. Furthermore, the on-line catalogue comprises additional educational programs in specific areas such as Nanomedicine, Medical Electronics, Clinical Informatics, Clinical Technology, Clinical Engineering, Computational Biology, Life Science Informatics, Clinical Data Management, Big Data in Healthcare, Data Mining in Healthcare and Medicine, Digital Health Systems, E-Health, Telemedicine, Healthcare Analytics, Wireless Networks in Healthcare, and Internet of Things in Healthcare.
In more detail, specific information was collected for each educational program. All these elements are included in the educational database. The information that is being collected for each study program includes: university/ies, department/faculty, study program name, academic level (e.g. undergrauate / postgraduate / doctoral / postdoctoral studies), specialization/s, and details about program's website (URL).
This study has covered almost 30 EFMI Countries - Members out of 32. The study includes 1,900 Universities, which we have accessed to locate aproximately 1,000 academic programs in the domains related to Biomedical and Health Informatics, including Bioinformatics and Biomedical Engineering at all academic levels.
The corresponding data of each study program was sent to the EFMI Representative Members in order to validate the existing information of each educational program in their corresponding countries. It is worth to mention there is pending feedback from certain representatives. Until receiving the feedback from all the countries, we should connsider this information as a draft.
All these data is necessary to explore so as understand the current educational status of European countries.
This initiative aims at the creation of an on-line catalogue that would provide information about European programs and courses in Biomedical and Health Informatics in order to support the promotion and provision awareness of the educational initiative to the wider biomedical and health informatics community in Europe and worldwide.