On the digital health transformation front, building partnerships will help strengthen the available of skills and training. Micro-credentialling, in particular, is of especial importance.

On 1-2 December 2025, the Network for Digital Health Excellence (NET4DHE) held a European Digital Health Summit at the Case de America in Madrid. The two-day platform for dialogue and collaboration concentrated on translating policy into practice and fostering partnerships among European Member States, academia, and industry.

Break-out session panellists on digital health skills (Source: European Digital Health Summit)

Practical experiences

One of the summit’s break-out sessions was on “Practical Pathways: Micro-credentials and Training Projects for Digital Health Skills”. With its focus on digital health transformation, the session was geared to skills, training, and workforce readiness. It identified several practical models for capacity-building.

The session was highly pertinent, given the current stage of implementation of Europe’s Union of Skills, alongside everything that is also happening in relation to the European Health Data Space and especially artificial intelligence.

The session was introduced by Maddalena Illario (Reference Sites Coordination Network) and moderated by Diane Whitehouse (EHTEL). Panellists were Katja Nacevski (BRIGHTskills), Minna Isomursu (SUSA project), Jésus Pulgarin Paños (XiA project), Lars Munter (European Health Futures Forum).

General challenges: In their debate, the four discussants tackled challenges such as:

• How partnerships can align their collaborations so as to create a common European digital skills ecosystem.
• How public-private partnerships can outlive European Union-funding cycles to deliver greater impact.
• What governance models and incentives can be used to prioritise digital upskilling.
• Insights into a shared European framework on micro-credentialling.
• The role of micro-credentialling, including e.g., recognition and accreditation, in fostering workforce mobility and interoperability.
• The integration of technical competences with other (transversal) skills.
• The twin importances of digital literacy and digital health literacy.

Specific challenges: Among today’s challenges raised for current health and care workforces were:

• Enabling personnel to spend more time with their patients.
• Dealing with the degree of “churn” (turnover) among personnel.
• Applying education to real-world scenarios and the realities of the healthcare market.
• Tackling other topics such as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and standards.

Practicalities: Hence, some applied, practical, highlights included:

• Using available large-scale platforms.
• Concentrating on models, programmes, and modules that are “intuitive to use” and are available from large-scale international organisations e.g., the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) or the World Health Organization (WHO).
• Learning by doing.
• Focusing on so-called flash educatione., short, condensed learning experiences and micro-credentialling.

From the audience came interesting insights on:

• The current diversity of experiences in the training available across Europe (one country’s experiences in digital skills, for example, may be much more advanced and mature than another’s).
• The fact that members of the workforce “cannot add yet another [university] degree” to their portfolio of skills.
• Enabling the experience, and immediacy, of learning “lightbulb moments”.

In a nutshell

While most of the break-out’s focus was on fairly immediate solutions, longer-term and future-facing concerns were also important. Overall, the four panellists expressed their interest in future collaborations.

What’s in it for EHTEL members?

Learn more from the experiences of partnerships and initiatives such as:

• BeWell 
• BRIGHTskills 
• European Health Futures Forum 
• SUSA project 
• XiA project
• a shared collaboration between XiA and BeWell.