BRIDGE – Building Responsible Interoperability

Project background

The ongoing digitization of the healthcare system is making interoperable information systems increasingly indispensable. To ensure that health data can be correctly interpreted by both people and computer systems, all stakeholders—from healthcare professionals to patients—must develop an understanding of the importance of interoperability. Although policymakers are increasingly recognizing the central role of interoperability, this understanding is still largely lacking in the day-to-day practice of healthcare.

Existing teaching approaches in health informatics, health economics, and health services research have so far treated the technical, organizational, and ethical-legal aspects of interoperability in isolation from one another. This is precisely where the BRIDGE project comes in: It is developing an innovative, virtual teaching and learning environment that integrates these three dimensions in a way that allows users to experience them firsthand.

At the heart of the project is a three-dimensional learning model featuring three specialized tools:

• Digital Health Data Journey: Illustrates the path of health data through various systems, incorporating technical standards such as HL7 FHIR, SNOMED CT, and LOINC.

• Organizational Impact Matrix: Visualizes how interoperability decisions affect various stakeholders in the healthcare system.

• Decision-Consequence Simulator: A gamified learning module that simulates the ethical and legal consequences of data decisions using the principles of a dilemma card game.

The project is being developed collaboratively with students from the fields of computer science, health economics, and health services research, as well as external experts.

Project objective

The project aims to create an innovative teaching and learning environment that empowers future healthcare professionals to holistically understand the interplay between technical interoperability, organizational processes, and ethical and legal requirements, and to shape them responsibly. The goal is to move beyond the previously isolated consideration of these three dimensions in higher education and to foster sustainable competencies through a transdisciplinary, participatory approach. The materials developed will be made available as Open Educational Resources, and the implementation guide will be made accessible to other universities.

Project procedure

The project will run for 24 months and is divided into four sequential phases: 

• Concept Development and Requirements Analysis: Formation of the interdisciplinary team, development of the didactic framework, and initial application scenarios.
• Technical Implementation: Development of the three integrative learning modules (Digital Health Data Journey, Impact Matrix, Decision-Consequence Simulator), including through hackathons and ethics jams with active student participation.
• Pilot and Evaluation: Trial operation in selected degree programs with systematic evaluation (pre- and post-tests, qualitative interviews, evaluation matrix analyses) and iterative optimization.
• Sustainability and Transfer: Integration into the curriculum, creation of an implementation guide, and development of a sustainability concept.

Innovation

BRIDGE takes a novel, transdisciplinary approach that, for the first time, not only presents the technical, organizational, and ethical-legal dimensions of interoperability in healthcare in parallel, but also allows learners to directly experience their interactions. The gamified learning module and the participatory development concept—featuring hackathons and ethics jams—are novel in this form within the field of health education.

For the economy and society, the project creates a pool of well-trained professionals who can make holistic and responsible decisions regarding interoperability in the healthcare sector. The materials, which are freely available as Open Educational Resources, along with the implementation guide, enable other universities to easily reuse them. Furthermore, the developed learning model is designed to be so generic that it can be applied to other areas such as Smart City or Industry 4.0.