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Description
We initiated the project acknowledging that in Romania, at the time of the writing, there was an insufficient number of physicians that use medical genetic factors in their practice, creating a discrepancy between the number of genetic epidemiologists and the demand for genetic data usage. One of the contributing factors is that even though curricula for applied genetic and epidemiology studies exist in the current educational offer of "Carol Davila" University, we still lack a course that shows how these elements can be tied together. As a consequence, there are still very few local specialists from the academic world with experience in the applied genetics field.
The project aims to bring a new perspective of study, in both initial and continuous training, by unifying the existing expertise in a single educational frame. We hope to give a formal direction to integrated studies that facilitates the appearance of a personalized- or precision-medicine approach in Romania.
The project intends to develop and deliver an integrated curriculum bringing together the applied medical genetic disciplines, in order to provide students with the skills required to work in this field or to introduce applied genetic methods in their professional activities. Once developed and delivered in an in-person session, the materials will be transferred online, becoming accessible to students and the medical community as an e-learning module. The curriculum will remain available for "Carol Davila" University, as a potential optional training for the regular student.
The project target groups are medical students, mostly from the terminal years of study, together with young professionals from healthcare industry interested in the applied medical genetics field. The project will also be open to Reykjavik University students in fields such as Biomedical Engineering or Computer Science and who are interested in biostatistics or bioinformatics.
Summary of project results
The project enhanced the quality and relevance of education in the field of applied genetics disciplines (Genetics, Epidemiology, Medical Informatics, Bioethics) by developing a curriculum on the crossroads of these disciplines.
There are 2 distinct groups of transnational activities related with learning, teaching and training activities:
1. teaching:
a. summer school: includes the delivery of the content and workshops, in-person style to 30 students
b. 2 online training instances: include the delivery of the content and workshops via e-Leaning methods, for 100 students,.
2. learning:
a. advanced training: includes the training for UMF and ExigiaMedical team members on advanced parts of applied genetics training
b. awarded students visit: include the workshops delivered by RU for the winning teams (10 persons) of the capstone projects contest.
The project results are:
• development of the first applied medical genetic course for UMF, putting together the existing capabilities and adding new knowledge acquired from partner institutions. The curriculum was provided as 1 training workbook and delivered in two different ways: 1 instance of in-person delivery, followed by 2 successive instances of on-line training.
• development of a teaching team able to deliver the training of applied genetics, which includes persons from all the project participants.
• development of new knowledge and skills related with applied medical genetic research, at student level, to encourage them to follow a career in this area or to use the results in their medical profession, by training 130 persons, 30 in the summer school and 100 in the e-learning module
• development of new skills related with data analysis for research projects and scientific publishing for the next generation of researchers
The project target groups were medical students, mostly from the terminal years of study, together with young professionals from healthcare industry (physicians, biochemists, etc.), interested in applied medical genetic field.
The results of the project are grouped in two different categories:
1. Educational outputs that includes:
2. Scientific outputs that includes:
The project impact can be quantified on the following directions:
1. real contribution to the development of a new generation of scientists in the field of genomic sciences, by developing the content for a first interdisciplinary course
2. real contribution to the development of the future educational offer of UMF, by providing the first interdisciplinary curriculum in genomic related area of study, ready to be implemented as an optional course.
3. initiation of the development of the abilities to integrate g
Summary of bilateral results
The partner of UMF from the donor country was Reykjavik University that has a well-established curriculum for Bioinformatics. Their experience proved to be very valuable in the identification of the advance topics that has been included into the content, the organization of the content itself and their direct participation both on the delivery of the Summer School and on the evaluation of the results helped us to deliver an optimized set of materials for the project audience. Also, Reykjavik University acted as scientific consultant for all the management activities, based on their existing experience in genomic studies.It has to be noted that, in this specific project the transfer of information went from the more skilled partner in the Bioinformatics field, namely Reykjavik University, to the one with a lower experience, namely UMF.The plans for continuing the collaboration are on the construction phase at the institutions'' level.