Involving health and care workforce and patients in the design and implementation of digital solutions: a key to success, as per WHO report

Involving health and care workforce and patients in the design and implementation of digital solutions: a key to success, as per WHO report

In September 2025, the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Regional Office for Europe published its policy brief “Accelerating the uptake of digital solutions by the health and care workforce in the WHO European Region”. This policy brief provides a synthesis of recent findings on how the deployment of various digital health innovations can impact the health and care workforce and highlights the progress made by countries in addressing the non-technological barriers. It also provides practical policy-level suggestions to help governments to create enabling environments and incentives to increase the use of Digital Health Technologies (DHTs) by the health and care workforce.

The report’s main findings include the following:

• Successful digital transformation involves complex organizational change;
• Having a strong and visible leadership culture that fosters innovation is instrumental in driving successful digital transformation; 
• Improving the uptake of digital solutions by the health and care workforce is closely linked to efforts to enhance its digital literacy;
• Factors that restrict the wide use of DHTs by the health and care workforce include inadequate inclusion of both workforce and patient groups in the design, testing and implementation of DHTs;
• Digital health strategies are proven drivers of coherent policies to prevent the misalignment of incentives and provide a firm foundation for digital transformation;
• Current evidence is limited on the potential barriers and facilitators for educating the health and care workforce.

WHO policy brief “Accelerating the uptake of digital solutions by the health and care workforce in the WHO European Region” available here.