Doctors, Students Expect and Embrace Many Tech Advances: Survey

Ken Terry January 10, 2020 Medscape Medical News © 2020 Cite this: Doctors, Students Expect and Embrace Many Tech Advances: Survey - Medscape - Jan 10, 2020.

The Stanford report also broke down the same data based on whether respondents used these technologies themselves. Of the students and residents who used wearables, 83% said the data could be valuable in patient care; of those who didn’t use them, just 75% said that. The percentages were similar for self-reported data from a health app.

Among physicians who used wearables, 90% thought that data from such devices could be useful in patient care; only 78% who didn’t use wearables believed that. Eighty-seven percent of doctors who used health apps said self-reported data from such apps could be helpful when treating patients vs 76% of those who didn’t use health apps.

Gap Between Desire and Capability

There was a clear gap between the respondents’ support of new technologies and their perceived ability to implement them. Only 18% of medical students and residents said their education had been very helpful in preparing them to use key digital tools in practice, and 58% of them said it had been somewhat helpful. Forty-four percent of physicians said their education had not helped them understand the basics of digital innovations.

The Stanford report illustrated this contrast with a graph showing the difference between how the respondents viewed technologies’ perceived benefit to patients and how well prepared the respondents were to use these innovations.

For example, while a majority of both physicians and students and residents perceived personalized medicine could be beneficial to future patients, only 11% and 5% of these groups, respectively, were ready to use this innovation.

Interestingly, 29% of physicians said they were prepared to use telemedicine compared with just 13% of students and residents, even though the latter were more inclined to see telemedicine as beneficial to patients. Also worth noting: physicians rated the potential benefit of telemedicine higher than that of EHRs.

The survey respondents seemed well aware of recent advances in artificial intelligence that could potentially take over certain aspects of medicine. Asked to predict what portion of their work might be automated in the future, students estimated 31%, residents 26%, and physicians 25%.

For more news, follow Medscape on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.

https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/923685#vp_2