Background context and evidence base for the innovation including where possible its international relevance
Globally populations are living longer and many more people are living with two or more co-existing conditions. However internationally healthcare systems are focused on single condition frameworks (OECD 2011) and undergraduate and postgraduate training programmes have been developed either for holistic care or the management of single conditions. The care of people with multiple conditions has become a priority for healthcare education and delivery and there is a clear evidence gap on how the quality and standards of care for single conditions can be integrated to form the optimal management of people with co-existing conditions (Andersen 2011 Salisbury 2012).
An International Comorbidity Education Framework (ICEF) has been recently developed in line with current clinical guidelines (American Expert Panel 2012 Department of Health 2014) which brings together key comorbidity concepts for consideration in teaching and learning (Rushton et al 2015). The ICEF was developed collaboratively by students academics and clinicians from four countries (India Italy Sweden England) and three disciplines (nursing medicine and pharmacy) to facilitate the integration of comorbidity into current health care curricula. The ICEF was designed for case-based learning and provides a series of questions relating to the comorbidity concepts about the care of a person with comorbidities. Comorbidity is a complex phenomenon requiring higher level learning to integrate skills knowledge and attitudes for transfer to diverse clinical settings. Case-based learning is interactive and student-centred and can significantly improve skills in patient assessment communication and problem-solving in preparation for clinical practice (Raurell-Torredà et al 2015 Yoo and Park 2014 a/b).
To activate the ICEF for student learning and to enable students to transfer their learning outside of the classroom setting to clinical practice an innovative mobile application (CoMO) has now been developed based on the ICEF. CoMo presents students with the key comorbidity questions relating to patient care and provide links to relevant resources as well as a ‘build your own case’ section with an exportable note facility to facilitate the integration of learning and practice (Norman 2011).
