Knowledge Transfer and Networking Upon Implementation of a Transdisciplinary Digital Health Curriculum in a Unique...

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Digital Health
• Curriculum Development

Background:

• Digital health education is currently underrepresented in medical faculties.
• A gap exists in the formal teaching of digital competencies within medical training.
• Existing digital health curricula often lack a transdisciplinary approach.

Purpose of the Study:

• To analyze the objective acquisition of digital competencies through a novel transdisciplinary curriculum.
• To implement and evaluate a compulsory elective subject in digital health at a German university.
• To assess the impact of digital leadership, AI, robotics, and digital communication on medical students' skills.

Main Methods:

• A transdisciplinary digital health curriculum was developed and taught over one semester.
• Participants completed a Likert scale evaluation and a 12-question pre-post knowledge test.
• Statistical analysis included an unpaired 2-tailed Student t test (P<.05 significance).

Main Results:

• The curriculum was implemented with 20 students across human medicine, dentistry, and medical biotechnology.
• A significant 106% increase in participants' digital knowledge was observed (P<.001).
• Learning objectives were initially low across preclinical and clinical stages (P=.02).

Conclusions:

• Transdisciplinary digital health curricula effectively increase objective knowledge in medical students.
• The curriculum addresses complex challenges in the digital transformation of healthcare.
• Robotics and artificial intelligence were the most engaging topics, indicated by student term paper submissions.