DECODE Education Framework to Prep Healthcare Professionals for Digital Health Era
With input from more than 200 experts across the globe, DECODE is a new framework aiming to prepare medical students for the roll out of digital health. With many doctors currently feeling ill-equipped for emerging technologies, this plan aims to radically alter medical education so that future clinicians are better prepared for digitalisation.
From general digitization to a prolific push for AI across all aspects of healthcare, the space is undergoing a seismic period of change. While other fields have been fundamentally transformed by enticing prowess of AI, healthcare has been largely left in the dust, wrestling with a plethora of challenges.
Amongst such challenges, are medical professionals themselves.
One study reports that 69% of clinicians feel overwhelmed by the data they work with, and an equal number believe that digitization will make things worse. This is despite the majority agreeing that most of their clinical decision-making will be based on automated tools over the next 10 years.
A more recent investigation discovered that only 18% of medical students believe their education was “very helpful” in preparing them for emerging technologies in healthcare. This is reflected in doctors’ distrust of AI-based recommendations, despite their superior performance to humans in many tasks.
It is apparent that clinicians need better education on digital health tech. At present, there is no requirement for medical students to undergo training for AI or other computerized tools. If this continues, future doctors will be left behind as digitization becomes a cornerstone for healthcare’s advancement.
“It is important for medical education to keep pace with the rapid digitalization in healthcare. To do so, targeted training and education in digital health is needed to ensure that future doctors can use these technologies efficiently and safely in care delivery,”
Dr Qi Chwen Ong, research assistant at NTU Singapore’s Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, and co-author of the framework.
Published today in JAMA Network Open, The Digital Health Competencies in Medical Education (DECODE) framework aims to kick start the integration of digital health training into medical curricula around the world. With contributions from 211 global experts in nearly 80 different countries it covers both established health technologies, as well as up-and-coming innovations. The framework also acknowledges ethical and regulatory issues and the impact of digital health technologies on whole populations.
DECODE is organized into four domains:
- Professionalism in Digital Health
- Patient and Population Digital Health
- Health Information Systems
- Health Data Science
Each domain contains a set of core skills and compulsory and non-compulsory learning outcomes that students should know before launching into their careers.
Recognizing that institutions will differ in available resources to deliver this teaching, Professor Amir H. Sam, Head of Imperial College School of Medicine, and co-author of the framework, stresses DECODE’s flexible design:
“Future doctors must be equipped with the competencies that allow them to respond best to the demands of a digital transformation in healthcare, and to ensure positive patient outcomes. Achieving a consensus on the core competencies, and building a digital health competencies framework, will enable medical schools to deliver the digital health curriculum through their own existing approaches and resources.”
Professor Josip Car, Professor of Population and Digital Health Sciences at King’s and co-lead author of the framework, echoes this:
“The DECODE framework not only addresses this [digital healthcare] gap, it also provides a flexible roadmap for institutions to tailor digital health training to their unique contexts and resources.”