A new WHO/Europe study published in The Lancet Digital Health shows that the use of mobile technologies, telemedicine and other digital tools intended to support clinical decisions have improved health workers’ performance and mental health, as well as their skills and competencies. The study, conducted globally, also warns that there are still gaps in the evaluation and impact of these technologies in lower- and middle-income countries.
“These findings are important because they reinforce our calls to governments and health authorities to promote and support the adoption of digital technologies among the health workforce,” said WHO/Europe’s Director of Country Health Policies and Systems and co-author of the study Dr Natasha Azzopardi-Muscat. “We are now seeing that, in addition to positive effects, digital tools can also improve the overall delivery of health services, which by extension means better health care for people.”
Entitled “The global impact of digital health technologies on health workers’ competencies and health workplaces: an overview of systematic reviews and lexical and sentence-based meta-analysis”, the study was carried out by co-authors from Brazil, Denmark, Germany, India and the United States of America, as well as WHO/Europe experts and officials. The findings are the result of a systematic review of 123 published studies with data for some 250 000 health-care providers globally.
Assessing digital health technologies
This is the first overview of systematic reviews to interpret the impact of digital health technologies on the competencies and performance of health-care workers. However, additional data is needed – especially for lower- and middle-income countries – to reach more accurate conclusions. Overall, there is a need for well-structured studies evaluating health-care providers and clinically related outcomes.
Although the study’s main finding was “enhanced performance” among health-care professionals, it also found a wide range of effects worthy of notice. Dr David Novillo-Ortiz, WHO/Europe’s Regional Adviser on Data and Digital Health and another co-author of the study, explained, “We have seen, for instance, how digital technologies can enhance inter-professional communication, compliance with clinical protocols, and health workers’ skills and personal competencies. These gains, in turn, can lead to lower costs for health providers, and so less public and private spending.”
Optimizing performance
In recent years, digital tools have gained broader acceptance among the health workforce, especially thanks to easier access to information, better communication among colleagues, lower costs, more accurate data and feedback from patients, and better overall productivity.
“Digital tools can play a crucial role in optimizing the performance of health and care workers, especially as we grapple with worker shortages across the entire WHO European Region,” said Dr Tomas Zapata, WHO/Europe’s Regional Adviser on Health Workforce and Service Delivery. “These new findings are proof that, when health and care workers have the tools and training they need, everyone stands to benefit, from the workforce to the patients themselves.”
The study shows that health and care workers who use digital health technologies report increased accuracy and efficacy during decision-making processes commonly faced in clinical practice; reduced time needed to execute tasks; improved productivity; increased access to reliable real-time data; more knowledge acquisition; and greater ability to provide timely technical and specialized reports on activities, progressions and remedies.
“This study supports our recently adopted Regional Digital Health Action Plan for the WHO European Region 2023–2030,” added Dr Novillo-Ortiz, “especially one of its focus areas calling for more research on evidence and good practices in the development and use of digital tools in the health-care sector.”