New findings from the University of Queensland shed light on the factors and outcomes associated with consumers’ trust in digital healthcare.
Why should consumers and patients trust digital healthcare? And how do we increase trust among consumers?
These were the kinds of questions a team of researchers from the University of Queensland sought to answer as part of a recent systematic review published in npj Digital Medicine.
As part of the review, researchers pooled data from over 26,000 people in 49 studies conducted between 2021 and 2023. The studies – mostly conducted in China but also in the US, Australia, and Canada – included a range of digital healthcare modalities and interventions such as chatbots, wearable technologies, electronic medical records, telehealth, and mobile health apps.
Providing high-quality digital health interventions that produce accurate data was positively associated with trust in digital healthcare, as was trust in the healthcare provider themselves. Other sociodemographic factors, such as income and educational level were also associated with trust in digital healthcare.
On the other hand, perceived risk and privacy concerns were found to be negatively associated with trust in digital healthcare, especially among “digital immigrants” – individuals born before 1980.
“A rise in healthcare provider trust would thereby also promote consumers’ trust in digital healthcare, making it the logical target for trust-builder interventions, particularly in the digital healthcare spheres of electronic medical platforms and mobile health,” the authors of the systematic review wrote.
Keeping a human touch was critical to building trust in digital healthcare among consumers.
“It appears that people have increased trust when human interaction prevails or adds to AI interventions, reinforcing our finding that trust is influenced by interpersonal factors,” the authors wrote.
People who trusted digital healthcare were also more likely to continue to use digital healthcare in the future.
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The authors called on regulatory bodies such as the US FDA and Australia’s TGA to establish safety, efficacy, and quality standards for digital healthcare.
“By broadening their scope to encompass other digital health modalities not currently considered medical devices (e.g., health and wellbeing mobile apps), these regulatory bodies could help to promote, build, and sustain trust in the digital health ecosystem.”
A key consideration for the findings was that over 40% of the included studies did not define trust – and the studies that did define what they considered as trust used a broad suite of definitions.
“Trust is an abstract, complex, and relational construct, and measuring trust in digital healthcare is inheriting a very challenging task. This does make in-depth evaluation and synthesis of trust parameters, methods, and quality measures difficult across the included studies,” the researchers noted.
Reinforcing trust in digital healthcare is a key component of the Australian Digital Health Blueprint, which outlines the federal government’s decade-long vision on how digital health can drive a sustainable and connected healthcare system.
“Trusted, timely, and accessible use of digital and data underpins a personalised and connected health and wellbeing experience for all Australians,” the Blueprint reads.