Exploring the Role of Early Career Medical Professionals From a Digital-Oriented University in Germany in Promoting Digital Health in Professional Settings: Qualitative Interview Study

Clinical Snapshot

Key Findings

• P Value: Not applicable — qualitative study

• Effect Size: Not applicable — qualitative study; no quantitative effect sizes reported

• Primary Outcome: Early career medical graduates from a digitally-oriented university primarily acquire digital health skills through self-directed learning and on-the-job experience rather than formal curriculum delivery alone. They apply these skills across clinical, entrepreneurial, and corporate settings but face significant barriers including knowledge gaps, limited institutional resources, and complex regulatory environments.

• Nnt Or Sensitivity: Not applicable — qualitative study; transferability and credibility are the relevant quality metrics rather than statistical measures

• Confidence Interval: Not applicable — qualitative study

Clinical Application

The study's recommendations — enhanced knowledge access, improved institutional frameworks, and supportive policy — are feasible in principle but require coordinated multi-level action across education, health institutions, and government. Individual clinicians can act on findings by seeking structured digital health mentorship and advocating for institutional digital infrastructure. Implementation at scale requires systemic investment. Australia's National Digital Health Strategy 2023–2028 and the Australian Digital Health Agency's workforce development agenda directly parallel the study's findings. The RACGP has increasingly incorporated digital health competencies into its curriculum frameworks, and the Medical Board of Australia's Good Medical Practice standards are evolving to address digital professionalism. Australian medical schools with digital health electives or integrated curricula (e.g., Macquarie University, University of Melbourne) may find the findings regarding self-directed learning and institutional barriers directly applicable. The PBS and My Health Record ecosystem create specific regulatory and interoperability challenges analogous to those described by German participants. TGA regulation of Software as a Medical Device (SaMD) represents a comparable regulatory complexity barrier for Australian graduate entrepreneurs. The findings support advocacy for formal digital health competency frameworks within AMC accreditation standards. Early career medical professionals (residents, junior doctors, recent graduates) who have received digitally-oriented medical education; medical educators designing digital health curricula; health system administrators seeking to leverage graduate digital competencies

Abstract

BACKGROUND: To address care delivery gaps, the health care system must embrace innovative digital solutions. Additionally, the rising integration of digitalization as a topic into medical education is providing students with broader opportunities to engage with digitalization overall. As digital health becomes an increasingly integral component of medical education and health care practice, digitally affine early career medical professionals constitute a vital resource for advancing digitalization within the health care sector. OBJECTIVE: This study examines how early career medical professionals from Witten/Herdecke University in Germany, with various courses focusing on digitalization, acquire digital knowledge, apply it across diverse practical contexts-ranging from start-ups and corporate environments to traditional clinical settings-and how they contribute to the advancement of digitalization within the entire health care sector. METHODS: Using a qualitative approach, 19 interviews were conducted with early career medical professionals who graduated in the last 15 years at Witten/Herdecke University. Subsequently, the interviews were transcribed and analyzed using a deductive-inductive approach. RESULTS: The findings reveal that medical graduates often acquire digital skills through intensive self-study and learning on the job, integrating them in various ways into their professional lives. Moreover, while graduates recognize their high potential to make their own contribution to the advancement of digitalization, they also face significant barriers such as knowledge gaps, limited resources, and complex regulations, which hinder their ability to contribute to digitalization in a variety of professional settings. Medical graduates report that they face a pressing need for enhanced knowledge access, improved institutional frameworks, and supportive policy measures to maximize their potential in advancing digitalization initiatives. CONCLUSIONS: Recent medical graduates represent an underused resource for health care digitalization. Unlocking this potential requires coordinated action across medical education, health care institutions, and policymaking to create appropriate conditions for graduates to actively drive digitalization.

References

1. 1.Koch, C., Ehlers, J. P., Nitsche, J., & Busse, T. S. (2026). Exploring the role of early career medical professionals from a digital-oriented university in Germany in promoting digital health in professional settings: Qualitative interview study. JMIR Medical Education. https://doi.org/10.2196/67801