The Higher Technical Institute for New Technologies of Life - Investing on human resources' competences, to tackle the demographic challenge
ITHACA project focuses on ageing, Friuli Venezia Giulia Region created the ITS "A. Volta" to respond to the request expressed by local, Italian and European companies of advanced technical and technological skills in the smart health sector (an area of the RIS3 strategy).
Italy's Higher technical institutes or ITS propose two-year educational courses and address students who have accomplished upper secondary education. They are set up as participatory foundations encompassing: enterprises; technical/professional upper secondary institutes; university departments; training centres; public authorities; local bodies. Higher technical institutes represent a specific post-secondary education and training path of the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research.
The Higher Technical Institute for New Technologies of Life was established in 2014 in Trieste with the financial support of the Regional Operational Program - ESF 2014 – 2020.The institute provides two courses, one for the “Management and maintenance of biomedical equipment, diagnostic imaging, and biotechnology” - TAB and the other one for the “Development and management of systems and solutions applied to medical informatics and bioinformatics” -TIB. Both courses are integrated with Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. In 2018 a third course focusing on Population Health Management – PHM started. The main beneficiaries of the practice are students, SMEs and research institutions.
Resources needed
The indicative value of a two-year training course developed by the ITS A. Volta"New technologies of life” targeted to 25 participants, amounts to 300.000,00 Euro covered mainly by national and European funds(ROP ESF 2014 - 2020)
Evidence of success
The percentages of job placement of participants of the Courses TIB a TAB after a year form the closure of the biennium 2016 – 2018 are: TIB 86%, TAB 93%. The Participants evaluated as very good the consistency of the subjects presented during the course with the objective of the course, while the enterprises, that hosted the internships, evaluated as good the capacity of participants in terms of adherence to technical, administrative procedures and capacity to propose innovative solutions.
Difficulties encountered
The main difficulties are related to the lack of awareness on the opportunities connected to the training paths among beneficiaries and the lack of coordination among the actors working in the smart health sector: region, health authorities, innovative enterprises, municipalities and citizens.
Potential for learning or transfer
ITS paths aim at overcoming the problems related, on the one hand, to the mismatch between academic knowledge and the labour market and, on the other hand, to the lack of specific skills in growing sectors such as the smart health industry.
The methodologies and the schemes of funding related to this Course are a model that can be described and transferred to other countries to improve national education and training paths on smart health.
Lesson for policy makers: education and training policies must be consistent with the regional innovation strategy to boost the competencies of human resources, increase the employment of young people and meet the needs of enterprises.
Tags: Entrepreneurship, Monitoring, Vulnerable groups, Cluster, Health, Higher education, Learning, Ageing
