Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Medical Education
Date Submitted: Apr 12, 2024
Date Accepted: Jul 11, 2024
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Enhancing Digital Mental Health Awareness and Mobile Health Com-petencies in Medical Education in Germany: Proof-of-Concept-Study and Summative Process Evaluation of a Quality Improvement Project
ABSTRACT
Background:
In Germany, there is a need to optimize the knowledge on the digital transfor-mation in mental healthcare, including digital therapeutics (e.g., apps on prescription) in medical education. However, digital health has not yet been systematically integrated into medical cur-ricula, and is trained in relatively small number of electives. Challenges for lecturers may include the dynamic field as well as lacking guidance on how to apply innovative teaching formats for these new competencies in their routines. Quality improvement projects provide options to pilot new educational offers, as little is known about the acceptability of participatory approaches in conventional medical education.
Objective:
This quality improvement study addresses this gap by introducing an elective scop-ing on app concepts designed to cultivate essential skills for future healthcare professionals.
Methods:
This proof-of-concept study describes the development, optimization, implementation, and evaluation of a web-based elective on digital mental health competencies in medical education. Building on a previous face-to-face elective workshop, the content is based on a design thinking approach and focuses on the development of app concepts related to mental health. Implement-ed as part of a quality improvement project, the elective aimed to guide medical students in de-veloping app concepts using a design thinking approach at a German medical school from Janu-ary 2021 to January 2024. Topics included digital (mental) health, app selection based on quality criteria and user preferences, and critical reflection on digitization in medical practice. The elec-tive took place six times within 36 months, with continuous evaluation and iterative optimiza-tion using both process and outcome measures, such as verbal feedback and online question-naires. We present examples of app concepts designed by students and summarize the quantita-tive and qualitative evaluations reported by the students.
Results:
Sixty students completed the elective and developed 25 health app concepts, most commonly including stress management and depression. In addition, disease management and prevention apps were designed for various somatic conditions, such as diabetes and chronic pain. The evalu-ation indicated a high overall satisfaction across the six courses (M = 1.70, SD = 0.68), with stu-dents valuing content, flexibility, support, and structure. While improvements in group work, submissions, and information transfer were suggested, the results underscore the effectiveness of the digital elective.
Conclusions:
This quality improvement study provides insights into relevant features for the successful inte-gration of digital health education as an elective subject into a medical curriculum. Key factors for the satisfaction of students included the participatory mindset (empowerment, co-creation), focus on competencies, discussions with actual app providers, and flexibility. Future work should define learning objectives for digital health literacy and provide recommendations for integra-tion. Encouraging early engagement in digital health courses is critical, emphasizing effective implementation rather than debating the need for digital health integration. Clinical Trial: NA
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