1 Background Medical equipment is one of the major contributors to the rapid progress of healthcare and the improvement of public health services. The constant increase in the variety and complexity of available health technologies require good management capacity to allocate the resources efficiently. The review of the World Bank's global $1.5 billion investment in medical devices showed that there are cases where 30% of the more sophisticated equipment stock was unused and the rest had 25-35% downtime. A root cause turned out to be ineffective management including planning, acquisition and subsequent operations . In the context of limited public health care funding, ensuring resources for medical equipment and infrastructure is challenging for Vietnam. There is no official data by Vietnam Ministry of Health (MOH) on total budget for medical equipment investment, maintenance and effectiveness throughout the health system. There are international guidelines and recommendations by WHO, especially for developing countries, on how to organize the management according to the equipment life-cycle . How well Vietnam equipment management practice follow the recommended guidelines and how WHO guidelines and recommendations can apply in Vietnam are basic questions to be investigated. The research will thus address one important, but often neglected, building block of the Vietnamese health system; Technologies, with particular focus on finding determinants of medical equipment performance to improve management effectiveness via education and training intervention. 2 Rationale In Viet Nam, as in many other countries of a similar income level, health technology management is not well-developed. There is no sound evidence on the effectiveness of the health technologies. According to a recent report, the percentage of medical equipment in good use condition ranges from 20% to 50% of total medical equipment in use in hospitals at all levels. In addition, the percentage of equipment being maintained drops to 30% in central and provincial level hospitals, and even to 10% in district level hospitals . The education of e.g. public health experts and/or clinical engineers in Health Technology Management is not systematically taking place in Vietnam. However, Department of Medical Equipment Management at the Hanoi School of Public Health (HSPH), the only of its kind among all health related universities in Vietnam, is responding to the importance of this area and is eager to identify priority areas to be addressed in the curriculum of master of hospital management and continuous training for health professional training program. Access to functioning and safe medical equipment at the point-of-care is key for providing health care services to the population. Typically technology "intensive" services profit more from an improved technology infrastructure. In this sense, everybody using health care services will eventually benefit from the system change. 3. Importance There is no current data or studies of similar systematics or scope. In the area of health systems and policies, there is thus a great interest in obtaining such reference data. The research is proposed specifically in Vietnam because of its development level - the health care expenditure on health technology in relation to the presence of appropriate management practices and education is particularly poor, i.e. there is great potential for improvement. 4. Research Impact At all stages of the research, relevant stakeholders and policy-makers will be involved closely. The results of the research will on one hand inform the MOH in the development of policies and actions on the other hand allow the HSPH in curriculum development and on design further research.

The Voyage project has set up a web platform, active for an online students and companies registration. Set up in the Vietnamese beneficiaries universities, the platform collects, in a unique database graduates and future graduates data, namely educational experience’ assessment questionnaire data and Certified CVs. The platform has two main scopes: enhancing employability of graduates and strengthening the efficiency of the HE system for curricula reforms in line with labour market needs. The Voyage platform, developed on the graduates DB and conceived to easily integrate new Vietnamese universities, allows enterprises to search for Vietnamese graduates according to specific skill needs, while giving the graduates a comprehensive and democratic access to labour market. Platform data have been exploited to release the first Vietnamese Graduates Profile Surveys: an analysis of beneficiary universities graduates and graduates’ features and performance, including evaluation of university experience, family background and future intentions and perspectives. Guidelines for platform management, deployment and data use as well as a Training Compendium summarizing main training contents have been realized. In the framework of the project the Monitoring enterprises skill needs’ report and the Best Practices for Internship Promotion’ report in Vietnam have been developed. The first report provides feedback on skill needs required by Vietnamese companies as well as on the state of art of Universities-Enterprises cooperation in the country; the second report collects Vietnamese and European best practices for internships promotion. Beneficiaries' universities have agreed to the project sustainability plan detailing the platform configuration in Vietnam, tasks and functions assigned to Consortium members for the release of the main project's outcomes in the future. Project contents and publication are available online at http://voyage-project.eu

In the current labour market scenario, it is crucial that all the universities, especially those from the emerging countries, will be equipped with an own permanent observatory to analyse and understand the working sectors, acquiring information about the demand and offer, taking into account the jobs’ and the sectors’ needs in a defined territory. This kind of tool would allow universities not only to provide useful information to their students, in order to guide them in the employment search, but also to adapt the training offer according to the effective needs of companies and enterprises. With this project, we intend to transfer this good practice to the universities in Vietnam, in order to help them develop an own Observatory system, to achieve the following objectives:1. To monitor the emerging economic sectors, providing a national overview and a deeper description at local level2. To understand and describe the enterprise’ structures and organisation3. To list all the professional roles within the enterprises, and to describe them in detail (tasks, activities, required competencies and skills)4. To find out, together with the entrepreneurs, the training gaps of each professional role, to collect feedback and suggestions on the best training offer for young people, who would like to develop their job career. 5. To activate a constructive dialogue between the teachers (who need to train students for the work) and enterprises (who create jobs thanks to their activities). The Observatory will carry out research on specific economic sectors, that will be published on a web platform for professionals where it will be possible to consult the professional qualifications (resulted from the Observatory's research) through predefined researches (eg by economic sector, by qualification, etc.) or by keywords.

MARCO POLO addresses the needs of partner countries (Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia) to foster the international cooperation of their Universities (HEI). Its main objectives are: to increase the capacities of non-European countries HEI in international cooperation, to contribute to the improvement of international networking; and increase and exploit the potentials in Teaching, Learning & Research (TLR).The activities within the project foresee the strengthening of strategic, infrastructure and human capacities in the 6 HEI from Partner Countries as a model for the development and modernisation of institutional management of international cooperation in NEC.Specific objectives will be achieved through carefully planned actions at an institutional, national and multi-regional level, including the implementation of training and strategic infrastructure; comparative studies and the development of National Recommendation to boost international cooperation in TLR; the creation of a best practice book for HEI on how to improve International Relations policies and management. These actions will be complemented throughout the project life by dissemination and networking activities, including National Roundtables, seminars, networking conferences and a multi-regional educational fair. The consortium includes 10 institutions, of which 3 are European HEI with a vast experience in international cooperation and 6 are HEI in NEC that face challenges on the development of international cooperation strategies.The project also foresees a library gateway, the creation of Strategic Development Plans for HEI of NEC and the testing of products through cooperation and a pilot mobility. The results will be easily transferrable at a regional, national and international level.

"The academic dynamics in the South-East Asia region are part of a changing environment. In addition to this environment, there is a political will on the part of the Cambodian and Vietnamese governments to generalize the process of empowering their higher education institutions (HEIs). Each institution must therefore define and implement a contextualized and renewed governance model that allows it to identify the changes and disruptions that affect its ecosystem, and therefore its own missions and activities. It is in this context the project ""Pilotage Universitaire Rénovée en Sud-Est Asiatique - PURSEA"" is taking place, which aims to strengthen the governance capacity of the 8 partner HEIs by supporting them in the definition of contextualized strategic planning and the implementation of operational action plans. It will be necessary to co-construct the methods and tools necessary to improve the strategic development plans of HEIs and to put them into action through a change management and support system. In this sense, the PURSEA project is doubly structuring in terms of both its ambition and its scope. Through its ambition, the support of the ERASMUS+ Programme creates the conditions for an in-depth transformation of university governance: the main challenge is to design a renewed governance model designed as a decision-making aid mechanism focused on responsible management in the face of the challenges facing society. By its scope, the support of the ERASMUS+ Programme makes it possible to co-construct the deliverables that will be used, beyond the duration of the project, to structure and develop a regional offer in strategic planning on the procedures for the evolution of governance and management of HEIs in South-East Asia."