JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Several publications on research into eHealth demonstrate promising results. Prior research indicated that the current generation of doctors is not trained to take advantage of these new technologies in healthcare. Therefore training and education for everyone using eHealth are key factors to a successful implementation. We set out to review if medical students feel prepared to take advantage of eHealth innovation in medicine.

Objective:

Our objective was to evaluate of medical students feel the need for more education about eHealth in their medical curriculum

Methods:

A questionnaire assessing the current education, the need for education about eHealth topics and the didactical forms for teaching these topics was made. The questionnaire used a scale from one to ten, one meaning fully disagreeing and ten meaning fully agreeing with a topic. This questionnaire was distributed among medical students of our university. R was used for all statistical procedures.

Results:

303 students replied to our questionnaire. The aggregate question ‘I feel prepared to take advantage of the technological developments within the medical field.’ scored a score of 4.8. The need for education about eHealth topics ranged from 6.4 to 7.3. The least popular didactical form was creating an own, mean score of 4.9. The most popular didactical option, mean score of 7.2, was to remotely follow a real-life patient under the supervision of a doctor.

Conclusions:

To the best of our knowledge, this is the largest evaluation of students’ opinions on eHealth training in a medical undergraduate curriculum. We demonstrated that medical students have a positive attitude towards incorporating eHealth in the medical curriculum.