JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The digitalization of healthcare evokes high hopes and expectations aimed at improving the way health services are delivered. Digital health technologies promise to maintain and enhance patient-related outcomes while ensuring the safety of healthcare staff and reducing the workload. As key users of digital health technologies, healthcare workers will be crucial to enable a meaningful digitalization of healthcare. Digital health literacy and digital skills are to become prerequisite competencies for health professionals in order to facilitate the implementation and leverage the potential of digital technologies to improve health.

Objective:

We aimed to assess European medical students’ perceived knowledge and opinions towards digital health, the status quo of digital health implementation in medical education, and, for these matters, the students’ most pressing needs.

Methods:

The explanatory design of our mixed-methods study was based on an online, anonymous, self-administered survey targeted towards medical students throughout Europe. The quantitative analysis was performed with the use of R statistical language; qualitative data was analyzed applying an inductive categorization approach using MAXQDA software.

Results:

The survey received a total of 451 responses from 39 European countries and all years of medical studies. The majority of respondents saw advantages in the use of digital health. More than half (53%) evaluated their eHealth skills as poor or very poor and 40% felt prepared to work in the digitized healthcare system. Medical students considered the reason for not feeling prepared as being primarily rooted in a lack of education, with 85 % agreeing or strongly agreeing that digital health education should be more implemented in the medical curriculum. Students demanded introductory and specific eHealth courses, topics for the latter being data management, ethical aspects, legal frameworks, research and entrepreneurial opportunities related to eHealth, its role in public health and health systems, communication skills, and practical training with eHealth technologies. The emphasis lay on tailoring learning to future job requirements and interprofessional education.

Conclusions:

This pan-European assessment of medical students’ needs and demands regarding digital health literacy and digital skills in medical education shows a lack of digital health-related formats in medical education and a perceived lack of digital skills and literacy among European medical students. The findings indicate a gap between the willingness of medical students to take an active role by becoming key players in the digital transformation of healthcare, and the lack of education they receive through their faculties.