ORTHOTRAINING PROJECT

Orthotraining

orthoTRAINING is a 2-year-long Leonardo Project that started in November 2007 aimed to ensure access to a continued learning in the fields of Orthopaedic Spine Surgery and spine biomechanics for surgeons and engineers who focus their attention to the design of implants for surgery.

The objective of this Project is to ensure access to a continued learning in the fields of Orthopaedic Spine Surgery and spine biomechanics for surgeons and engineers who focus their attention to the design of implants for surgery.

Training contents will be based upon teaching of some aspects related to medicine and engineering disciplines. These contents are undertaken to give a larger comprehension of surgical techniques linked to spine pathologies which are related to implant use. Also, these modules give information about the biomechanical response to a specific treatment.

This project is addressed to the following centres and university departments:

• Orthopaedic surgery departments of Schools of Medicine.
• Departments of biomedical engineering in technical universities and postgraduate degrees in biomedical engineering.
• Public hospitals with doctors in training.
• Public or private hospitals with doctors who want extent or renew their knowledge on new technologies linked to spine surgery.
• R+D and sales departments of orthopaedic implant manufacturers that want to offer continued training to their employees.

Training material will be placed on a telematic learning campus which comprises both theoretical modules about medicine and biomechanics, and practice contents for the students to make exercises to secure their learning.

Theory documentation will consist in transferring previous training material that is already developed by the consortium partners and transform it into a digital application which will be accessible to any European student.

Preparation of practice documentation will consist in transforming the results of the orthoSIM platform, together with clinical cases obtained by the clinical teams within the consortium, into a practical and comprehensive training tool.

The main innovation offered by this courses is that theoretical contents and practice modules will be studied by means a telematic tool, outfitting a wide exploitation potential.

In order to achieve the objective of ensuring access to a continued learning in the fields of Orthopaedic Spine Surgery and spine biomechanics for surgeons and engineers, next partial objectives are planned:

• Detection of needs and definition of training contents.
• Integration and adaptation of training contents in the telematic training tool developed.
• Preparing the Pilot training course. Validation with potential end users.
• Dissemination and exploitation of the telematic course. Valorisation.

LEONARDO PROGRAMME

The aim of Leonardo da Vinci Multilateral Projects ‘Transfer of Innovation’ is to improve the quality and attractiveness of the European vocational education and training system by adapting and integrating innovative content or results from previous Leonardo da Vinci Projects, or from other innovative projects into public and/or private vocational training systems and companies at the national, local, regional, or sectorial level.

The process for transferring innovative training content or results will include the following:

• Identifying and analyzing targeted user requirements
• Selecting and analyzing innovative content to meet these requirements and analyzing the feasibility of transfer
• Integrating or certifying it in European, national, regional, local and/or sectorial training systems and practices.