Tech & Innovation in Healthcare

Physicians are enthusiastic about adopting digital tools.

On Oct. 25, 2022, the American Medical Association (AMA) released their findings from their digital health research in the webinar, “AMA Digital Health Research 2022: Trends, Takeaways and the Transformation of Care.” In the presentation, the speakers examined the major healthcare technology adoption trends over the previous three years.

Find out if your healthcare organization shares similar views on the use of digital tools.

Learn How Attitudes Have Changed Since 2019

The AMA first conducted a study in 2016 to evaluate physicians’ motivations and requirements for adopting digital clinical tools. Three years later, the AMA repeated the research to determine any changes in digital tool adoption and ascertain shifts in attitudes toward use or adoption.

“We repeated this survey in 2019, and released results just about a month before COVID, which was interesting to already see the changes from 2016 to 2019 in a pre-pandemic environment,” said Meg Barron, vice president of digital health innovations for the AMA.

In 2022, the AMA conducted the survey once again to assess clinicians’ attitudes toward the current use of, and the adoption of, digital tools in healthcare. “The AMA’s digital health strategy is focused on helping to ensure that technology can help to be an asset, and not one more thing or an additional burden for patients and physicians,” Barron said.

After reviewing the results of the study, researchers found five key trends related to the digital tool use and adoption in healthcare.

Trend 1: More Physicians View Digital Tools as an Advantage

According to the study, approximately 93 percent of all physicians surveyed view digital tools as an advantage in 2022. This number has continued to trend upward since the initial 2016 study, and physicians aged 51 years and older who view digital tools as an advantage experienced the largest increase since 2019.

At the same time, individuals who don’t see an advantage to digital tools are trending downward across the board. Additionally, the individuals who don’t see an advantage are concentrated mostly in specialists and the 51 years and older groups.

Trend 2: All Physicians Show Significant Growth on Digital Tool Adoption

Between 2016 and 2019, the research found a tiny increase in the average number of digital tools that physicians use. However, 2022 saw a significant positive shift across physicians of different ages, genders, years in practice, and how enthusiastic they are about technology. “The average number of tools used has increased by about 1.5 times since 2019 when we did this research, and that’s largely been in relation to the spike in telehealth usage,” Barron said.

Trend 3: Physicians Mostly Adopted Telehealth and Remote Monitoring

Easily the least surprising statistic from the survey involved the use of telehealth. According to the AMA, approximately 80 percent of surveyed physicians are using telehealth compared to 28 percent in 2019 and 14 percent in 2016. “This isn’t a huge surprise given the spike in usage during the pandemic, but when you think about this, the use of telehealth has tripled since 2019, which is a massive shift,” Barron said.

Remote patient monitoring (RPM) has also seen significant growth in use since 2019. Approximately 30 percent of physicians are using remote monitoring for efficiency, whereas 16 percent used it in 2019, and only 12 percent used the technology in 2016.

“Remote patient monitoring for efficiency has doubled since 2019. One thing that I think is interesting here is despite the growth in RPM, it’s the least utilized of the seven solutions we asked about. I think that speaks to the market share opportunity that we have on our hand.”

Trend 4: Most of the Enthusiasm Growth Centers Around Telehealth

When physicians, clinicians, and other healthcare professionals show excitement for technology, adopting and implementing the tools can feel easier. The 2022 survey found that enthusiasm for digital tools has grown since 2019, albeit most of the enthusiasm has revolved around telehealth.

In 2016, 36 percent of physicians were enthusiastic about telehealth. That percentage increased to 42 percent in 2019, and in 2022, after three years of consistent telehealth use, enthusiasm for the technology was surveyed around 57 percent. This was the largest growth of all the surveyed solutions in any of the studies.

“That’s one thing that the pandemic did do was it pushed many of us, almost overnight, into a telemedicine world and that was by necessity. What we found was certainly these [visits] started to take off, and with the physicians and [qualified healthcare professionals] being able to see the utility of telemedicine in their practice,” said Leslie Prellwitz, director of CPT^® content management and development for the AMA.

Physicians were able to see in real-time how telehealth affected their workflows, how they could communicate with their patients, and how to provide access to patients who they may not have been able to see in person.

Trend 5: Many Physicians Are Planning to Adopt Emerging Tech

Technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR), and digital therapeutics are growing in popularity and adoption each year, but current use by healthcare professionals remains low. The AMA found that while most physicians may not be currently using advanced technologies, many healthcare professionals are planning to within the next few years.

For example, at the time of the survey, less than 20 percent of physicians were using AI for practice efficiencies or clinical applications. But 76 percent of respondents plan to adopt the technology within or beyond the next year.

“This is a very evolving field. There are all those issues of efficacy — will it work in my workflow? Is it going to result in better care for patients? Certainly, there are lots of questions to be considered there. There are lots of different applications of that type of technology in healthcare,” Prellwitz added.