Josip Car and Josh Quah at the WHO Collaborating Centre for Digital Health and Health Education, focus on the enormous potential of digital education technologies to address the global shortfall in health workers and consider the application of interactive and immersive modalities to deepen digital competencies of the health workforce.
“Digital health education represents a more effective way to empower the health workforce than traditional education.”
18 million. 18 million could seem like any number on a dry statistical report and too big for one to reasonably comprehend. But if you read next that, according to the WHO, 18,000,000 people is the number of health workers required to meet our global health needs by 2030, suddenly this previouslyincomprehensible figure takes an immediate human context.
And faces – like your family’s access to timely hospital services. Or your community having adequate healthcare personnel to serve its needs. Or the capacity of those same workers to be equipped with the latest training and education. Discussing the health needs of populations simply cannot be relegated to the realm of snappy television soundbites or dusty institutional white papers.
The WHO and the Commonwealth Secretariat both recognise this looming reality; it is one of the biggest challenges facing the UN in achieving its Sustainable Development Goals…
Associate Professor Josip Car
Founding Director, WHO Collaborating Centre for Digital Health & Health Education
