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Background: Worldwide educational programs face the challenge how to define and integrate digital competencies in medical education. This article describes the implementation of learning outcomes with respect to digital competencies in the compulsory curriculum at Hannover Medical School (MHH). Methods: An interdisciplinary MHH project group was constituted consisting of physicians and experts in medical informatics and in curriculum development. Over the course of 7 work sessions the group compared different international and national frameworks dealing with digital competencies for physicians. By a consensus driven approach the working group drew up a collection of learning outcomes which were regarded relevant to be incorporated in the curriculum at MHH. Results: The analysis of different frameworks indicated that data literacy is a central domain within all viewed preexisting catalogs. During the course of the project group analysis, 57 learning outcomes with respect to digital competencies were identified as necessary to be integrated in the compulsory curriculum. They were divided in 5 main categories: “handling of medical data,” “the digital infrastructure of the health system,” “scope of application: usage in patient care and in the field of preventive medicine,” “medico-legal and ethical basics,” and “transformation processes in medicine due to digitalization.” Conclusions: The MHH project group concluded that medical students should be taught digital competencies that enable an understanding of underlying functional principles of digital systems rather than their correct utilization. The presented project indicates that a close interdisciplinary collaboration of physicians and medical informaticians can be a promising approach to incorporate digital competencies in the undergraduate medical curriculum.

The gross anatomy dissection course is considered to be one of the most important subjects in medical school. Advancing technology facilitates the production of e-learning material that can improve the learning of topographic anatomy during the course. The purpose of this study was to examine a locally produced audiovisual dissection manual's effects on performance in dissection, formal knowledge gained, motivation, emotions, learning behavior, and learning efficiency of the medical students. The results, combined with the total effort put into the production of the manual, should support decisions on further implementation of this kind of audiovisual e-learning resource into the university's curriculum. First-year medical students (n = 279) were randomly divided into three groups for two weeks within the regular dissection course hours during the dissection of the anterior and posterior triangles of the neck. Two groups received an audiovisual dissection manual (n = 96) or an improved written manual (n = 94) as an intervention, the control group (n = 89) received the standard dissection manual. After dissection, each student filled out tests and surveys and their dissections were evaluated. The audiovisual dissection manual did not have any significant positive effects on the examined parameters. The effects of the audiovisual dissection manual on the medical students' learning experience, as observed in this study, did not support further curriculum implementation of this kind of e-learning resource. This study can serve as an orientation for further evaluation and design of e-learning resources for the gross anatomy dissection course. Anat Sci Educ 0: 1-14.

The increasing digitalization of medicine stressed the importance of teaching digital competencies in undergraduate medical education. However, in many medical curricula in Germany, medical informatics is underrepresented. Due the upcoming reorganization of medical undergraduate education in Germany, topics previously assigned to medical informatics represent curricular challenges for all medical disciplines. Against this background, experiences from the project DigiWissMed show how medical informatics can support the teaching of digital competencies in all disciplines of medical education. Therefore, interdisciplinary teaching teams of medical informatics professionals and physicians were formed. In different academic years, this teaching teams jointly designed and implemented new seminars to convey digital competencies. The seminars covers topics such as technology acceptance, telemedicine and assistive health care related to the medical specialty. So, in the project DigiWissMed, the practicability and usefulness of interdisciplinary teaching teams to convey digital competencies could be demonstrate. In the digitalization process of medicine, medical informatics plays a key role. For future-proof medical education, experts of this field should be involved in teaching digital competencies, too.

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