Abstract
There is an increasing emphasis on digital health. However, success of digital health depends on voluntary adoption, which requires good product–market fit for a wide range of users. A national-level survey through snowball sampling was conducted from November 2020 to March 2021 among all MBBS doctors willing to participate. A total of 1010 doctors from different sectors, locations, qualifications with wide range of experience and patient load participated. Doctors from across the board felt going digital would entail long learning curves, additional workload, more screen time and that they do not improve overall quality of care. Majority feel digital solutions do not help in increasing net revenue and consequently prefer free-of-cost digital solutions. Among those willing to pay, onetime investment for hardware/equipment (38%) followed by annual subscription for software licenses (34%) are the preferred modalities. Seventy-four percent of doctors expressed not being comfortable with government providing digital solutions or controlling the data. In order to make the findings more practical and relevant, digital health adoption curve and market intelligence grid have been proposed. Digital health companies can use the adoption curve to understand how adoption can fluctuate with cost, ease of use and data policy. The grid can help companies identify the requirements of their target segment of doctors and therefore achieve better product–market fit.
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The study was conceptualized by Dr NRG, Dr VH under the guidance of Dr SS. Study design was created and methodology was planned by Dr NRG, Dr VH, Dr SS, Dr ARS, Dr AK and Dr DKS. Mr PRG, Mr SV and Mr NG being engineers and experts on software systems & artificial intelligence, played a vital role while designing the questionnaire and then during the interpretation of results and writing discussion. Dr AR, Dr MP, Dr DD, Dr JBS, Dr RK, Dr BG, Dr CH, Dr SKP, Dr DTK and Dr KW being clinicians and experts from different fields played a key role in designing the questionnaire and validating it. They also contributed during data interpretation and in writing discussion. Dr AR, Dr AK and Mr DCJ helped in creating visualization like charts and tables. Dr NRG, Dr VH and Dr AR prepared the first draft of the manuscript which was reviewed and approved by all other authors.
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Approval has been obtained from All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Ethics Committee vide Ref No. 1043/03.10.2020.
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Gowda, N.R., Vikas, H., Satpathy, S. et al. Digital elixir for healthcare: market intelligence and policy implications. Decision 50, 489–500 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40622-023-00370-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40622-023-00370-z