MeCS-Kol: Medical & Clinician Scientist Kolleg
Patients with chronic conditions, disabilities and multimorbidity have complex and multifaceted requirements, specific needs and life circumstances that entail specific demands on the healthcare system. Furthermore, an ever-increasing number of people are affected by chronic conditions, partly due to rising life expectancy. Demographic change is affecting disease patterns and posing challenges for the healthcare system. The trend towards providing more outpatient care rather than inpatient care, driven by a shortage of skilled staff, also presents challenges for medical care. Against the backdrop of these challenges, the medical school OWL is dedicated, as part of the BMBF third-party funded MeCS-Kol project led by Professor Claudia Hornberg, MD, to researching and improving care for people with disabilities and chronic conditions.
As part of this project, partners from various research groups and clinics within the medical school OWL will work on four sub-projects, known as ‘pillars’. These sub-projects aim to research, develop, test and evaluate target-group-specific challenges, innovative solutions and teaching and training programmes for healthcare professionals, addressing the needs of and how to deal with people with disabilities and chronic illnesses at
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Digital teaching and learning platform for teaching and training programmes
In Pillar 4, Digital Medicine, in collaboration with the Department of Studies and Teaching at the medical school OWL, will develop and design a digital teaching and learning platform to improve care for people with disabilities and chronic conditions, through which the teaching and training programmes will be delivered. The platform will be partially piloted during the funding period and is aimed at postgraduate students, undergraduates, doctors, (healthcare) professionals, as well as people with disabilities and/or chronic conditions and their relatives.
Under Pillar 4, Digital Medicine is responsible for the development, maintenance and further refinement of the learning platform. In addition, materials and guidelines for creating accessible teaching and learning resources for postgraduate students and Principal Investigators (PIs) are being developed.
Particular emphasis is placed on accessible design and the ongoing evaluation of the platform, involving relevant stakeholders.
Research questions
The project aims to answer the following research questions: How can a cross-format regulatory and evidence-based model for the reproducible evaluation of digital accessibility for teaching and learning materials within the MeCs Research Group be developed and applied? How can digital accessibility requirements be systematically integrated into the development, provision and evaluation of the MeCs-Kolleg’s teaching and learning platform? To what extent does an evidence-based evaluation model support the accessible use of the teaching and learning platform by different target groups within the MeCs-Kolleg? The MeCs-Kol project is managed by the German Aerospace Centre (DLR). The project runs for a period of 48 months (October 2024–October 2028); work on the sub-projects began in the summer of 2025.
Further information can be found on the project’s main page.