Abstract:

International Master Programmes are increasingly promoted as a strategic response to the growing shortage of skilled professionals in digital health and healthcare systems worldwide. In the context of an escalating healthcare workforce crisis and accelerating digital transformation, higher education must provide specialized, internationally aligned training pathways. However, in practice, internationalisation in higher education remains constrained by the challenge of repeated implementation. Mobility is often limited not by student demand, but by the difficulty of ensuring transparent accountability , consistent learning outcomes and quality assurance in heterogeneous national academic systems. As a result, many joint programmes remain international while operating through parallel and weakly aligned curricula.

This paper presents a unique mobility-first framework developed within the DS4Health project, co-funded by the European Commission under the Digital Europe Programme. The framework supports the delivery of an international MSc in Digital Health through a multi- national academic alliance including NOVA University Lisbon (Portugal), Institut Polytechnique de Paris (France), Tel Aviv University (Israel), RWTH Aachen University Hospital (Germany), Medical University of Vienna (Austria), University of Ioannina (Greece), and University Politehnica of Bucharest (Romania).

The study explores how mobility can be implemented as a formally decentralized and quality-assured educational process. The proposed approach integrates three core components:
(i) outcome-based specification of curricular units using a shared template,
(ii) a structured equivalency mapping strategy to support credit recognition and transparent pathways cross-institutions, and
(iii) a two-stage validation mechanism combining local scientific review with consortium-level peer validation to ensure comparability and academic consistency.

These mechanisms are supported by a shared digital layer that centralises course descriptors, learning outcomes, assessment models and validated teaching resources, enabling students and programme coordinators to plan and implement mobility with traceability and clarity.

The paper contributes a transferable and scalable model for internationalisation in postgraduate education that moves beyond ad hoc agreements and enables mobility as a scalable component of programme delivery. Its unique contribution is to demonstrate how international learning, structured mobility, equivalency governance and multi-layer quality assurance, can be integrated into an auditable framework. This model responds directly to the urgent need for internationally trained digital health specialists capable of operating across borders, supporting workforce resilience, adaptability, and system-wide innovation in rapidly evolving healthcare environments.

Keywords:

Internationalisation in Higher Education, Student Mobility, Credit Recognition, Quality Assurance, Joint Master Programmes, Digital Education.