A lot has happened in the world between 2016 and 2022, especially in the healthcare sector. When the AMA started this project in 2016, Kate Kirley, MD – a family physician and director of chronic disease prevention at the American Medical Association – was quoted as stating “Digital health is the sort of Wild West of medicine and health care right now. It’s one of the new frontiers that we are all attempting to tame.” A survey of over 1300 physicians, across all ages and specialties, was conducted to get a feel for how the AMA could help providers be more comfortable with digital health solutions.
What The Study Shows..
The study in 2016 found that physicians had four main questions about digital health:
- Does it work?
- Will I get paid?
- Will I get sued?
- Does it work in my practice?
In 2016, there was relatively little study about physician engagement with technology solutions compared to data about the technology itself. In reality, technology could be wonderful, but without anyone using it, it wasn’t going to yield any results.
Barriers to IT adoption at that point in time were identified as:
- The availability of additional resources and training.
- Access to accurate data.
- Positive impact on quality of care.
- The evidence base for digital health solution efficacy.
After a global pandemic and a lot of tech advancement in a short time, these questions and barriers discovered in 2016 now look quite different.
Documenting Changing Attitudes
This month, Healthcare IT News published an update article by Andrea Fox focusing on this same AMA study – the 2022 version. The survey was again conducted among a broad range of ages and specialties, to investigate physicians’ motivations and requirements for adopting health technologies.
Some important results were revealed:
- The number of physicians who saw tech tools as an advantage grew from 85% in 2016 to 93% in 2022.
- The average number of digital health tools in use by a physician grew from 2.2 in 2016 to 3.8 in 2022.
- Telehealth was used by 14% of the physicians in 2016, and in 2022 it is now a whopping 80%.
- Use of remote monitoring devices (RPM) grew from 12% in 2016 to more than 30% in 2022.
Emerging Technology and Physician Adoption
The survey results for newer technology, such as augmented intelligence or artificial intelligence (AI) and digital therapeutics is very promising. While currently 1 in 5 physicians integrate AI, 2 in 5 plan to adopt the technology in the next year.
The AMA identified the driving forces behind this accelerated adoption, such as improved clinical outcomes and work efficiencies, reduced stress and burnout, better data privacy, and electronic health record integrations. Physicians seem overall more optimistic about using digital health tools for patient care and the improved outcomes that can result.
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