Inter- and Transdisciplinarity Competencies in Medical Informatics and Digital Health Education - A Scoping Review

Medical informatics and digital health are intrinsically transdisciplinary fields, requiring practitioners to integrate clinical knowledge, computational methods, regulatory understanding, and societal engagement. While inter- and transdisciplinary (ITD) competencies are widely considered essential in these domains, it remains unclear how explicitly they are addressed in existing training programs.

To map the current landscape of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary training initiatives relevant to medical informatics and digital health and to identify gaps and strategies in ITD competency development, a scoping review was conducted following PRISMA-ScR guidelines. PubMed was searched using a query combining terms for inter-/transdisciplinarity, education/training, and computational/informatics domains. After two-step title and abstract screening, 20 publications were included for full-text analysis. Publications were assessed for disciplinary coverage, ITD competency approaches, pedagogical frameworks, and relevance to ITD training in medical informatics.

The 20 included papers show that ITD competencies are predominantly addressed implicitly through project-based or collaborative learning rather than as explicit, assessable learning objectives. A clear gap exists between the acknowledged importance of ITD competencies and their formal integration into medical informatics and digital health curricula.

Future work should develop explicit ITD learning objectives, structured curricula, and dedicated assessment methods, aligned with ITD meta-research and supported by institutional and network-level initiatives.