Contrast of Digital and Health Literacy Between IT and Health Care Specialists Highlights the Importance of Multidisciplinary Teams for Digital Health-A Pilot Study.

Abstract

Despite their promises, digital innovations have scarcely translated to technologies used in routine clinical practice, making the identification of barriers to successful implementation a research priority. Low levels of transdisciplinary skills represent such a barrier but so far, this has not been evaluated and compared between information technology (IT) and health care specialists. In this study, we evaluated the level of digital health literacy among IT and health care specialists. An anonymous questionnaire was distributed to staff at a breast cancer unit and an IT department of two German universities in December 2020. The survey questionnaire consisted of the previously validated eHealth Literacy Assessment Toolkit and additional questions with respect to age, profession, and career stage. Mann-Whitney or Wilcoxon rank-sum tests and two-sample chi-square tests were used for the analysis. The survey was completed by 113 individuals: 70 (61.9%) IT specialists and 43 (38.1%) health care specialists. Health care specialists scored significantly higher on the health-related scales and IT specialists scored significantly higher on the digitally related scales. No single participant identified themselves to have the highest level of literacy on all survey questions (n = 0 of 113; 0%). Only one person (n = 1 of 113; 0.9%) consistently reported a high or the highest level of literacy. Although IT and health care specialists showed great literacy in their respective disciplines, only few individuals combined both digital and health care literacy. Multidisciplinary teams and transdisciplinary curricula are crucial to bridge skill gaps between disciplines and to drive the implementation of digital health initiatives.