Digital Innovation for One Health Practitioners
“Thank you” to the local organising team at the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) for organising a valuable interactive One Health Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Module.
The first of our Education and Training activities of 2021 took place online in February. Our partners at BfR in Germany organised and hosted the One Health EJP’s second CPD Module which focused on Digital Innovation for One Health Practitioners.
The one-week module centred around the use of innovative open-source software solutions supporting risk assessment, zoonotic outbreak investigations and data interoperability. The objective of this training module was to introduce new tools and technologies for One Health researchers and professionals. Specifically, solutions that support foodborne disease outbreak investigations, efficient surveillance data integration as well as the re-use of risk assessment models were introduced. The solutions presented have the potential to support the whole One Health community including national and international risk assessment agencies, risk managers and academic institutions.
The virtual training was delivered by senior research scientists from BfR and partners from our consortium, including SVA, DTU Food, ANSES, RKI and NVI and stakeholders, EFSA with an extensive track record in providing training for research scientists from different research domains.
Over 50 participants – from early-career researchers and PhD students, up to senior scientists – from 15 European countries attended the workshop. The event encouraged knowledge sharing and even allowed participants to present their digital innovation tools, which can be applied to scenarios of food safety, public health and animal health.
Scientists of the One Health EJP Joint Research and Joint Integrative Projects, ORION, COHESIVE and RaDAR also shared their knowledge and lessons learned from their projects.
The CPD module provided joint plenary presentation sessions, moderated interactive workshops with practical exercises, as well as an e-learning platform, that can still be used by participants to further improve their knowledge. For this, dedicated e-learning courses on the software FoodChain-Lab, the RAKIP and RADAR model repositories and on resources promoting the adoption of the Linked Open Data concept in One Health were developed. The e-learning platform was also used to measure knowledge gains and collect feedback from the workshop participants.
The online workshop received approved accreditation by the Academy of Veterinary Continuing Education (ATF), therefore participants from across Europe who attended and participated in the entire module, received 22 ATF hours, and could convert these to CE credits in their respective country.
Social media played a role in encourage conversations and interactions during and after the event. The event was well promoted on the One Health EJP Twitter and LinkedIn accounts which not only connected delegates on social media, but also gave them the opportunity to share their experiences to a wide audience. This is not only important for building relationships and collaboration, but also increasing the awareness of the training opportunities that the One Health EJP offers.
In an increasingly digital world, we must use training opportunities such as these to harmonise One Health approaches, collaborative and share knowledge across all pillars of One Health. This event is an exemplary illustration of what can be achieved.
