Exploring the Role of Medical Graduates in promoting Digital Health in Professional Settings in Germany: Insights from a Qualitative Interview Study (Preprint)

BACKGROUND To address care delivery gaps, the healthcare system must embrace innovative digital solutions. Additionally, the rising integration of digitalization as a topic into medical education is providing students with broader opportunities to engage with digitalization overall. As digital health becomes an increasingly integral component of medical education and healthcare practice, digital affine recent medical graduates constitute a vital resource for advancing digitalization within the healthcare sector. OBJECTIVE This study examines how recent medical graduates acquire digital knowledge, apply it across diverse practical contexts – ranging from startups and corporate environments to traditional clinical settings – and how they contribute to the advancement of digitalization within the entire healthcare sector. METHODS Using a qualitative approach, 19 interviews with medical graduates from the last 15 years, educated by a university in Germany with a strong focus on digitalization, were conducted. Subsequently, the interviews were transcribed and analyzed using a deductive-inductive approach, following the qualitative content analysis method by Kuckartz (2012). RESULTS The findings reveal that medical graduates often acquire digital skills through an intensive self-study and learning on the job, integrating them in various ways into their professional life. Moreover, while graduates recognize their high potential to make on own contribution to the advancement of digitalization, they also face significant barriers such as knowledge gaps, limited resources, and complex regulations, which hinder their ability to contribute to push digitalization in a variety of professional settings. Medical graduates report that they face a pressing need for enhanced knowledge access, improved institutional frameworks, and supportive policy measures to maximize their potential in advancing digitalization initiatives. CONCLUSIONS Recent medical graduates represent an underutilized resource for healthcare digitalization. Unlocking this potential requires coordinated action across medical education, healthcare institutions, and policymaking to create appropriate conditions for graduates to actively drive digitalization.