Digital Inclusion, Access, and Literacy

Summary:  View help for Summary Digital health tools (e.g., patient portals, telehealth, mobile health applications) are increasingly essential to meaningful engagement in healthcare. These tools facilitate access (e.g., patient-provider communication, remote visits) and self-management (e.g., engagement with health information) and are associated with greater patient satisfaction, better chronic disease and behavioral health outcomes, and reduced acute care utilization. Providing personalized support may increase engagement among patients who face challenges to using digital health tools, but it is difficult to identify patients who require assistance with digital health due to the dearth of validated screening measure that are usable in a clinical setting, particularly screening tools tailored for use among patients in safety net settings at greater risk for facing digital exclusion (e.g., older adults).

The purpose of this study was to identify a brief set of measures to efficiently and accurately measure digital skills to identify and tailor approaches to support patients requiring assistance to effectively use digital health tools. The objectives were to: (1) Develop a short self-report measure (Skills Measurement and Readiness Training for Digital Health [SMART Digital Health] Scale) of digital skills needed to use digital health tools, and (2) validate the SMART Digital Health Scale in relation to observed performance completing digital health tasks among a diverse sample of patients receiving care from safety net healthcare settings.