Who should adopt digital health (first)?

Look first at the decision marker.

Medical doctors serve as the keyholders to digital health adoption, unlocking its potential for patients and guiding them through its maze of possibilities. This is common sense for any new product, including emerging technology like digital health apps. The word of mouth.

General practitioners are the gatekeepers

General practitioners (GPs) are often the first point of contact for patients seeking medical care, at least through my experience in Germany, Switzerland, and even Japan. They have the most chance to establish relationships with their patients as most of us will be seeing them at least once a year. This puts them in a unique position to introduce and advocate for the adoption of digital health tools and technologies.

Learn about their views

The study conducted by Weik et al. in 2024 prioritized General Practitioners’ opinions to identify perceived barriers and improvements in digital health development. It is essential to note that involving doctors in the product development iteration, just like any other app development with real users (again quite common sense), is crucial. However, the study results showed that most perceived barriers were organizational. Therefore, it is necessary to focus on improving the organizational structure to overcome these barriers and ensure successful digital health development.

While most GPs in the survey are expecting the increase of digital tools in the practice, the organizational change is lagging behind. Below are some of the listed barriers and improvement strategies from this paper.

• Barriers
  • workflow adjustments (incl. socio-political context)
  • inadequate [[reimbursement]]
  • high training effort (workload, time)
• Improvement strategies
  • [[interoperability]]
  • technical support (ongoing training)
  • [[usability]] or perceived usefulness

Last message

A bit ironic again from the side of the patient. Did you know that according to a study by Mouloudj in 2023, trust in digital health systems doesn’t significantly affect people’s intention to use them? It’s quite surprising, isn’t it? It just goes to show that there are many factors that influence our decisions when it comes to using technology in healthcare. And maybe it is stopping at our GPs – the holy gatekeepers. Not to blame because there is of course many responsibilities into play as presented in the barrier list.

Reading materials

Weik, L., Fehring, L., Mortsiefer, A., & Meister, S. (2024). Understanding inherent influencing factors to digital health adoption in general practices through a mixed-methods analysis. Npj Digital Medicine, 7(1), 47. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-024-01049-0

Mouloudj, K., Bouarar, A. C., Asanza, D. M., Saadaoui, L., Mouloudj, S., Njoku, A. U., Evans, M. A., & Bouarar, A. (2023). Factors Influencing the Adoption of Digital Health Apps: An Extended Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). In A. Bouarar, K. Mouloudj, & D. Martínez Asanza (Eds.), Integrating Digital Health Strategies for Effective Administration (pp. 116-132). IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-6684-8337-4.ch007