Training Physicians in the Digital Health Era: How to Leverage the Residency Elective

Abstract

Digital health is an expanding field and is fundamentally changing the ways health care can be delivered to patients. Despite the changing landscape of health care delivery, medical trainees are not routinely exposed to digital health during training. In this viewpoint, we argue that thoughtfully implemented immersive elective internships with digital health organizations, including start-ups, during residency are valuable for residents, residency programs, and digital health companies. This viewpoint represents the opinions of the authors based on their experience as resident physicians working as interns within a start-up health navigation and telehealth company. First, residents were able to apply their expertise beyond the traditional clinical environment, use creativity to solve health care problems, and learn from different disciplines not typically encountered by most physicians in traditional clinical practice. Second, residency programs were able to strengthen their program’s educational offerings and better meet the needs of a heterogenous group of residents who are increasingly seeking nontraditional ways to learn more about care delivery transformation. Third, digital health companies were able to expand their clinical team and receive new insights from physicians in training. We believe that immersive elective internships for physicians in training provide opportunities for experiential learning in a fast-paced environment within a field that is rapidly evolving. By creating similar experiences for other resident physicians, residency programs and digital health companies have a key opportunity to influence future physician-leaders and health care innovators.