Chronic diseases represent a major burden on both population health as well as the costs of healthcare systems. Europe carries the highest burden of chronic diseases which cause 86% of all deaths. Of these, cardio-vascular diseases amount for around half of all deaths in the WHO European region and impose a cost of more than € 192 billion a year on the European economy. Classical surgical treatment represents a high risk procedure especially for patients with co-morbidities, challenging the cardiovascular system and the rest of the peripheral organs. Therefore, several treatment alternatives using endovascular therapy alone or in combination with open surgery have been developed to repair these complex thoracic-abdominal aneurysms (TAAs). The general trend is toward a less invasive approach, which improves patient outcomes, recovery time and quality of life. Thus the SavingHearts project aims to: • Employ the strategic use of ICT technologies in teaching/training activities by using a telemedicine approach to create an innovative best practice environment in the form of an ICT platform where students and other practitioners can experience non-invasive surgery procedures. The procedures shown will be accompanied by specialist commentary. • Besides offering a modern way of delivering specialist education the program will improve competences of students and specialists participating in the program, as the remote part of the program will be accompanied by a two week ‘traineeship’ in a working hospital, where the course participants will get to real life working experience accompanying the whole diagnostic process. • The ICT platform will be also populated with relevant training materials, specialising on treatment of TAAs in co-morbidity cases and pediatric cases, which will be delivered as an Open Educational Resources (OER). • SavingHearts includes international student and staff mobility as a means to test the outputs produced by the project, thus providing opportunities for learning mobility. The participation of both a hospital, a research center and HEIs in the project will strengthen the international cooperation between these stakeholders. By achieving the objectives above the SavingHearts project addresses the following needs: • towards labor market: a close collaboration between HEIs and the hospital (i.e. the labor market)) will results in students who are more attuned and educated towards the requirements of the working environment and who already have a basic knowledge in non-invasive cardiologic procedures. • on organizational level: (a) modernization of the content and the provision medium for cardiology related courses (b) high quality OERs, (b) innovative concepts for telemedicine in education with regard to cardiac surgery, (c) integration of blended learning approaches into teaching activities, (d) collaborative learning in virtual communities using ICT-based tools. • on an individual level: (a) ability to insert oneself in the diagostic process in practice, (b) basic competences in the diagnostic process and the treatments to be delivered , (c) use of telemedicine tools and ICT in the learning process. The composition of the consortium was based on the correspondence between the tasks to be completed and the partners' expertise. All the project partners involved in the project have been selected according to their expertise in the field of cardiology and to their capacity of providing professional training to the target group of students to whom the project addresses, as well as their technical and financial capacity of dealing with previous projects in which they were involved. The participating organization involved in the project bring, through their profile and experience, procure the necessary knowledge and skills to be acquired, so that the project is carried out with highly prepared resources. All the European partner universities have considerable experience in external academic cooperation, including student and staff mobility. The project will have an important impact on individuals by facilitating the cross-cultural dialogue and cooperation for individual participants. On an organizational level it will support the creation of innovation excellence practices with an innovative teaching and training concept and environment and foster better international cooperation in the field of cardiology, especially with focus on non-invasive surgical procedures. For Polisano hospital the strategic partnership will have a great impact on strengthening the collaboration with university for the upgrading of its theoretical knowledge. As an important medical institute, the hospital can decrease the employee’s work load, by using volunteer students and providing better service to the patients. Moreover, regarding the customer satisfaction, Polisano can gain expertise through applying new methods of treatment.