At 16th of October 2019 the international BarCamp “Health – Technology – Participation” took place in the Institute for eHealth and Management in Health care (IEMG) of Flensburg University of Applied sciences. 53 participants from 7 countries around the Baltic Sea came to the BarCamp in Flensburg.”The BarCamp is a great opportunity to discuss current topics form different areas of the health sector and to develop solutions”, says Prof. Dr. Bosco Lehr, head of the IEMG and vice president of Flensburg University of Applied Sciences.
Over 50 persons from Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Denmark, Poland and Germany participated. The event was planned by the project coordinators of the Interreg project BaltCityPrevention Jana Mau and Levke Johannsen. “We are proud to welcome so many international experts here in Flensburg”.
BaltCityPrevention is an international project that aims to promote intervention and to tackle the health behavior of children and adolescents in a preventive way. The innovative intervention model includes the use of eHealth technologies and participative methods. It is used to strengthen the behavior of children and adolescents on a long term. Under the slogan: Health – Technology – Participation there have been ten workshops and presentations about new approaches in prevention.
Because of the international character the participants got insights in the successes and activities of other countries like Estonia, Finland and Latvia. Kirsi Paavola, employee of Seinäjoki University of Applied Sciences in Finland, presented the innovative health project “@geing online”: “A project from Finland that supports elderly people (65+) in their domestic environment and works with eHealth solutions.”
The students of the Master’s degree eHealth (Flensburg University of Applied Sciences) brought in themselves in the sessions with own topics. For example Niklas Losse, who moderated a discussion about the cross-border use of e-receipts. “We can learn a lot of the health record in Estonia. They have an access key and a software, that connects the different functions and allows an easy use”, said Greta de Haas.
Besides the project BaltCityPrevention the German-Danish Project “Demantec – dementia and innovative technologies” that is about the application of innovative technologies for people with dementia, was presented. In interdisciplinary workshops integrated care models have been discussed.
In the end of the day it was a really fruitful BarCamp. Despite the little experience with BarCamps of some participants, all of them really adapted the concept well and current topics have been spontaneous taken up.
Networking was another big part of the event and the participants got the chance to exchange experiences about health literacy, digital solutions and preventive approaches in other countries.
„The international partners could work out solutions, that can be further developed in the EU projects”, summarized Lehr. “The BarCamp offered a lot of opportunities to get in contact with international partners.”