Medical students’ intention to integrate digital health into their medical practice: A pre-peri COVID-19 survey study in Canada

Abstract

Objective We aimed to explore the factors that influence medical students’ intention to integrate dHealth technologies in their practice and analyze the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on their perceptions and intention. Methods We conducted a two-phased survey study at the University of Montreal's medical school in Canada. The study population consisted of 1367 medical students. The survey questionnaire was administered in two phases, that is, an initial survey (t0) in February 2020, before the Covid-19 pandemic, and a replication survey (t1) in January 2021, during the pandemic. Component-based structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test seven research hypotheses. Results A total of 184 students responded to the survey at t0 (13%), whereas 138 responded to the survey at t1 (10%). Findings reveal that students, especially those who are in their preclinical years, had little occasion to experiment with dHealth technologies during their degree. This lack of exposure may explain why a vast majority felt that dHealth should be integrated into medical education. Most respondents declared an intention to integrate dHealth, including AI-based tools, into their future medical practice. One of the most salient differences observed between t0 and t1 brings telemedicine to the forefront of medical education. SEM results confirm the explanatory power of the proposed research model. Conclusions The present study unveils the specific dHealth technologies that could be integrated into existing medical curricula. Formal training would increase students’ competencies with these technologies which, in turn, could ease their adoption and effective use in their practice.

Student perspectives on the integration of artificial intelligence into healthcare services

“…Similarly, students from Canadian medical school had very few occasions to experiment with AI technologies during their degree. 46 Moreover, our students cited a lack of mentorship from experts as the main barrier to obtaining knowledge about AI, followed by lack of dedicated courses and proper funding, highlighting the need to incorporate AI into core curricula in biomedical sciences and other medical programs. 47 There was a strong association between gender and knowledge in participants, with male students having read more about AI and having more knowledge.…”

The use of digital tools by general practitioners in Finnish public health centres

“…Moreover, our results suggest a discrepancy between attitudes and practice: GPs perceive themselves as competent in information security and working in a digital environment, but new digital tools are still rarely used. When reflecting on the Technology Acceptance Model [19,20], the new tools may simply not be good or useful enough for GPs -it might be that the new tools give no added value to everyday work. On the other hand, it is possible that implementation just proceeds slowly, as shown previously [23,24].…”

“…Furthermore, the Finnish MEDigi project's eHealth division has assessed the current situation of eHealth education and defined eHealth competency goals for the degree of licentiate of medicine [17][18][19]. To date, eHealth competence has appeared to be fragmented in undergraduate medical education [17,20] and presumably also in continuing education.…”

Neurology education in the era of artificial intelligence

“…Surveys of medical students show that students are aware and attuned to the importance of digital health in medical profession, but also feel unprepared to adopt digital health technology including artificial intelligence-based technology because of lack of training and exposure during training [26][27][28][29]. In a survey of students at all public medical schools in Austria, respondents were aware of only one-third of digital terms queried in the survey, without any differences being noted across years of training [30].…”