The BiosProject: An Erasmus+ European Action for Enhancing Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Knowledge, Skills and Literacy
Authors: Trovato Guglielmo M , Brischetto Daniela , Dorn Laura Elisa , Costigliola Vincenzo 
Published: June 2021

A preliminary analysis performed by EMA, European Medical Association, confirmed the wide unmet needs in Europe regarding the availability of qualified health professional with expertise in bioinformatics. EMA addressed as a major need a strong link of bioinformatics and clinical activities, a greater medical literacy and awareness of the related opportunities with significant clinical correspondence. Nonetheless, this is a factor, and a gap, that weakens also the scientific credit of practising medical doctors vs. other health professionals and even vs. the patients, with a greater awareness of this topic. Healthcare is undergoing profound changes, driven by novel clinical skills and knowledge, Bioscience and technological advancements, demographic shifts, and changing lifestyles throughout Europe. The BioS project, an Erasmus+ action, is developing new innovative modular curricula that integrate the latest advancements in Computational Biology. The target is the Healthcare sector and transversal skills that can be immediately applied by medical doctors in clinical context.

Healthcare professionals will become knowledgeable users who can understand the output from bioinformatics. This novel virtual learning environment is bringing together medical doctors, bioinformatics experts, educators and researchers, as well policy‐makers across Europe. On this platform, users can exchange experiences and follow virtual lessons. Differently from the already existing e‐learning Courses, BIOS is comprehensive of many facets of bioinformatics as a profession, included in the four modules: Introduction and preliminary knowledge; Computational Statistics for clinical doctors; Commercial personalized genomics services in patient care; Quality Improvement in Healthcare.

The virtual learning platform and the educational resources will be available in 8 EU languages (EN, GR, PT, IT, ES, DE, FR, FI) to maximize the pool of possible users. The consortium includes12 Partners and one Leading Partner (Fig. 1). The flow‐chart is presented in Fig. 2.

The dissemination strategy, itemized in fig. 3 and 4, is using Main Channels, i.e. Direct Mailing list – to EMA members (about 50.000), Direct Mailing list – to defined stakeholders (about 1500), Newsletters in EMA and BiosProject Webpages, Posts in Twitter BiosProject https://twitter.com/BiosProject1 and in Twitter EMA https://twitter.com/MedicalEmanet, BiosProject's channel https://youtu.be/pPt5eMN8qIA. The weekly accesses to Twitter BiosProject are currently around 1500/Week.

Through the FaceBook and Linkedin groups, periodic information, 2–4 x year, is reaching about 4 million interested persons.

The MOOC e‐learning course will be open source, credited by Erasmus, tutored in any institution or company which will assure essential and certified availability of expertise & facilities.

Support or Funding Information

BioSProject is funded and approved in the European Framework of Erasmus+ /Sector Skills Alliances Programme

This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.