LifeTrain: Driving lifelong learning for biomedical professionals

Abstract

This article describes LifeTrain — the European common framework for continuing professional development in the biomedical sciences. An important goal of LifeTrain is to support biomedical professionals to work collaboratively across disciplines, sectors and national boundaries. LifeTrain is an open community with a unifying goal; it brings together many excellent, but disparate, activities into a process towards establishing a focused and coherent framework for continuing professional development in the biomedical sciences. This collaborative approach provides the critical mass to make a major contribution to strengthen the skills and competencies of biomedical professionals in a rapidly changing environment. LifeTrain's signatories, which include multinational pharmaceutical companies, research infrastructures, professional and scientific bodies, higher-education institutes and research institutes, have agreed to the principles of the framework and to continue to collaborate to implement LifeTrain. We warmly invite others to join us.