Dive Brief:
- A new survey released Monday commissioned by the American Medical Association notes physicians are looking forward to digital health adoption.
- Conducted by Kanter TNS, 85% of 1,300 surveyed physicians stated digital health solutions are advantageous to patient care.
- Physicians rated the following elements as most important for adoption of digital health tools: liability coverage, data privacy, and workflow integration with EHR systems.
Dive Insight:
The survey covers a broad range of digital health tools, including telemedicine, mobile health, wearables, remote monitoring, and mobile apps. Physicians reported being optimistic digital health has potential for improving practice efficiencies, patient safety, and diagnostic ability, while reducing burnout.
It’s no secret that other industries such as banking have been quicker to adopt and evolve with mobile technology. What is surprising is that it’s taken so long for the healthcare industry to adopt and adapt to more mobile options. In some arenas of health IT, there still seems to be a fair amount of a “let’s see what happens” approach for companies’ mission statements and value-adds.
Education concept: Training on computer keyboard background
Regulations and privacy concerns certainly are essential but it’s taken awhile to get mobile, digital technology into the provider setting. Even when federal programs incentivized adoption for technology like EHRs, the push was met with frustration. While EHR adoption is currently high, there are concerns that EHR technology does more harm with administrative burden than good with facilitating patient care.
The survey points to the optimism for a digital health revolution yet it also underscores the industry hasn’t moved the needle much on health IT usability and functionality that is widely regarded as helping a integrated, streamlined care process.
This article originally appeared here.