‘Laboratorium’ the Iss-G20 platform for education at the start

 Available to professionals all over the world; the first course on Epidemic Intelligence

Through this first course dedicated to Epidemic Intelligence the Iss Laboratorium platform will be launched and made available to health professionals from all over the world in order to enhance their skills on prevention and response to health crises. The project was launched in March 2021 as a part of the G20 Task Force on Health, and was acknowledged by the Leaders and Ministers of Health Declaration 2021. The aim is to enhance knowledge and skills of the professional assets whom will be dealing with public health, dealing with subjects such as preparedness, prevention and response to health crises.

“The pandemic – explains Silvio Brusaferro, Iss President – has pushed towards enhancing the health operators’ necessary skills in order to face future challenges in public health. During the G20 under Italy’s presidency, the Iss has launched the ‘Laboratorium’ program for the development of tools apt for distance learning in any context”.

The platform’s boot anticipates the third reunion of the directive committee of the ‘Public Health and Emergency Workforce Roadmap’, a roadmap launched on the occasion of the 2021 G20 under Italy’s presidency in order to ensure an educated medical staff to face emergencies, and will be hosted on July 6th and 7th by the Iss.

About the platform

The platform was oriented to the development of new educational tools suitable to distance learning. E-learning courses were developed, based on the integration of Competence-based education models and Problem-based learning by the World Health Organization. Thus, Laboratorium is an educational space which integrates PBL and CBE methodologies, adapting them to the e-learning context. In addition to the distance learning courses, the platform also contains a Repository which allows to publicly access educational tools and documents which were selected by authoritative sources, regarding the core subjects in public health. The Repository was imagined not only for professional operators but for citizens as well, and is configurated as an educational tool for medical staff, collecting data from diverse sources which are daily updated and approved. The update is carried out through an automated web tool. The aim is to present the project as the sole center of collected contents for learning, guided by an educational approach which follows training goals, aiming at closing educational gaps.

About the course on Epidemic Intelligence

The course objective is to give the participants the ability to assess the potential use and applicability of the Epidemic Intelligence systems, focusing on the surveillance based on prevention events and early alert both on institutional and national level. The course was built by the Iss in collaboration with WHO, ECDC, and the american CDC, it is released in English and distributed in asynchronus and low-interaction mode, available on the EDUISS e-learning platform (https://eduiss.it), for all public health operators.