Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet plans to launch a massive open online course (MOOC) in the area of e-health.

Called MOOC eHealth –Opportunities and Challenges, the course is being delivered via the non-profit international education group edX, which started as a collaboration between Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The course begins April 22 and registration is open until the course starts.

“Sweden is way ahead of the game because we have a relatively large amount of experience using IT in healthcare. There is a great deal of accumulated knowledge here that we now want to share,” says Professor Sabine Koch, the course coordinator.

Students from all over the world will be able to enroll in an introduction to the field of e-health and learn about its opportunities and challenges from different perspectives. The MOOC will give students an understanding of health informatics and how it works. The course also will cover factors contributing to the successful development and implementation of sustainable e-health services — and the possible pitfalls.

On completion of the course, students will have a basic knowledge of how various e-health strategies can be used where they work and also will have an understanding of what e-health can mean to individual patients.

Karolinska Institutet has experience delivering instruction in this area; it has been offering a master’s program in the subject for the past five years, which has received positive reviews from both the European Commission and the university’s masters’ students.

Source: Karolinska Institutet