At the University of Pisa, information technology meets sport, health and wellness: thus a unique and specific master’s degree course in the Italian panorama was born: “Informatics for Digital Health”.
“Digital Health is the near future – says Professor Giuseppe Prencipe of the Department of Computer Science of the University of Pisa – a future that will pass from the design of applications and software platforms capable, for example, of creating personalized therapies, design new drugs, better manage access to clinical tests, but also assist patients remotely or monitor athletes’ performance. It will be about creating safe, interoperable and intelligent platforms capable of managing and extracting information from an enormous and heterogeneous amount of data produced by citizens-patients-assisted in line with the provisions of the National Digital Health Agency established in 2023″.
The IT department of the University of Pisa is therefore at the forefront in taking up this challenge in a sector destined to become increasingly strategic.
“In 2022 spending on digital health in Italy grew by 12.5% compared to 2020, reaching 1.69 billion euros – says Vincenzo Ambriola, director of the Department of Computer Science – In addition to these investments, those envisaged by the PNRR which dedicates 15.63 billion euros to the health sectorin particular to telemedicine which will have a fundamental role in the new model of territorial assistance”.
In line with this scenario, the newly created master’s degree course is positioned as a point of reference at a national level and beyond. Teaching will be in English, the ideal candidates are mainly three-year graduates in computer science, engineering, mathematics and physics. The objective is to train a professional figure who, starting from information technology knowledge and skills, is able to face and solve complex problems that arise in complex chain of “health value” which is made up, among others, of monitoring, diagnosis, treatment, well-being and assistance of citizens, patients and clients.
“We will focus a lot on establishing relationships with companies, organizations and bodies in the biomedical, wellness, sports, nutraceutical and pharmaceutical sectors, in order to offer as many opportunities as possible for projects, internships, internships and job placements for our students. – says Professor Paolo Ferragina of the University of Pisa and the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna – and precisely to strengthen these relationships and the international projection of the training course we have defined an Advisory Board with representatives of institutions, companies, universities and venture capitalists not only Italians in the aforementioned sectors”.
Another element characterizing the new master’s degree (waiting like every new degree course for definitive ministerial approval at the beginning of July) will also be the close collaboration between teachers in the IT, biomedical, pharma, bioengineering and economic-legal sectors. At the end of the two years, students will try their hand at developing software projects proposed by teachers, companies and professionals in the sectors indicated above which can then be explored in depth in their thesis work, with possible internships in the proposing institutions. Lgraduates in Informatics for Digital Health will also have the opportunity to take the State Exam to qualify as a senior engineer.
For information and registration: https://didattica.di.unipi.it/laurea-magistrale-in-informatics-for-digital-health/
Source: University of Pisa
