Health and IT education
Programming workshops with over 600 school pupils, inspiring lectures and lab tours on the topic of digitalisation in medicine, and two attractive exhibits as part of the exhibition in Zurich’s main station – these were ETH’s highlights from the second Digital Day.
The national Digital Day, which took place for the second time this year, aims to raise public awareness of digital transformation. ETH Zurich also took part, focusing on the two topics of IT education for school pupils and digitalisation in medicine. The University has long played a prominent role in both areas.
In collaboration with the University of Basel and the Bern, Grisons, Lucerne and Schaffhausen universities of teacher education, ETH Zurich’s Centre for Computer Science Education held programming workshops for children. At six locations on Digital Day, over 600 school pupils dived into the fascinating world of programming, discovering that programming is a creative and enjoyable activity. They also learned skills that will make their lives easier in the digital future.
Impressions from Digital Day 2018
Alain Berset and Lino Guzzella in conversation with Kai Schmidt from the ETH spin-off Myoswiss.
Kai Schmidt demonstrates SRF presenter Tobias Müller how his external muscle works.
A test person uses the leg press to test the ideal weight for training. Visitors test the Vivosoc health chip. The programming workshops were well attended. These guys were focused on programming.
Occasionally it needed input from the coaches.
A live broadcast from the Balgrist campus gave visitors to the HB an insight into research on a hand exoskeleton. Roland Sigrist explains to the visitors what cybathlon is all about.
There was also plenty of positive feedback for the lectures and lab tours on the topic of digitalisation in medicine, which ETH Zurich organised together with the University of Zurich and other partners from the healthcare sector. Experts from a wide range of specialities not only showed an interested public what opportunities digital methods can offer for diagnosis and treatment; they also discussed the related challenges, such as the legal consequences that result from the current capabilities of data processing.
Like last year, the major exhibition in Zurich’s main station again drew large crowds on Digital Day. In addition to the Myosuit exoskeleton, which is being developed by the ETH spin-off Myoswiss into a marketable product, Midata – an association founded by ETH researchers – showed visitors how it can make sensitive information available to science without losing control over the data.