JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Digital health is the backbone of the healthcare transformation. Health professionals require security in digital places because digital criminals have target them. Millions of medical records were breached for money by criminals. In terms of digital health security, there is a gap in studies in limited-resource countries. Therefore, researching health professionals' attitudes toward digital health data security has a significant purpose for digital health outcomes.

Objective:

The study aims to assess the attitude of health professionals towards digital health data security and its associated factors in specialized referral teaching hospitals in Northwest Ethiopia.

Methods:

A hospital-based cross-sectional study was conducted to measure health professionals' attitudes toward digital health data security. In the study setting, there were 2039 healthcare professionals. A single population proportion was used to determine the sample size. Thus, the total sample size was 423. A pretest was conducted to measure the consistency and validity of the questionnaires. Finally, a self-administered questionnaire was used to collect the data. Binary logistic regression was used to identify the associated factors. Candidates with p-values (P ≤ 0.2) were selected for multi-variable logistic analysis using Stata software version 16.

Results:

A total of 423, 402 health professionals (95.0 %) participated in this study. Of all participants, 254 health professionals (63%) were males, and the mean age of the respondent was 34.5 ± 5.87 (SD) years. The attitude of health professionals toward digital health data security at specialized teaching hospitals was 60.9%. Based on the findings, post-master degree (AOR = 3.29, 95% CI [1.16-9.34]), basic computer skills (AOR = 1.81, 95% CI [1.11-2.94]), knowledge (AOR = 3.24,95% CI [2.0-5.22]), and perceived usefulness (AOR = 1.97, 95% CI [1.06-3.63]) were factors for health professional attitudes toward digital health data security.

Conclusions:

Health professionals have limited attitudes toward digital health data security. Therefore, improving educational status, developing basic computer skills, boosting knowledge, and the perceived usefulness of digital health data security are necessary to improve health professionals’ attitudes. This supports the development of digitization in the healthcare arena.