# Healthcare's digital skills gap has a measurement problem, and new research is pushing for a fix

By MarketScale Newsroom · Published 2026-07-12 · Healthcare on MarketScale
Canonical: https://www.marketscale.com/industries/healthcare/healthcares-digital-skills-gap-has-a-measurement-problem-and-new-research-is-pushing-for-a-fix

> Two 2026 studies expose a critical gap: most digital health competency tools are nursing-focused, and the healthcare workforce lacks validated interprofessional

## Key points

- Current digital health competency tools focus mainly on nursing.
- There's a recognized need for validated interprofessional tools in healthcare.
- New research aims to address the digital skills gap in healthcare.

Most health systems investing in digital transformation have no reliable way to measure whether their staff are actually equipped to use the tools they are deploying. That is the practical conclusion sitting beneath two separate peer-reviewed studies published in 2026, one in the International Journal of Medical Informatics and one in npj Digital Public Health. Together, they expose a structural weakness in how the industry approaches workforce readiness: the assessment infrastructure has not kept pace with the technology rollout.

## A toolkit inventory that falls short of the need

Researchers at an Australian institution conducted a rapid review of all available validated tools for assessing digital health competence in the healthcare workforce, publishing their findings in the International Journal of Medical Informatics in July 2026. The search covered PubMed, CINAHL, Google Scholar, and grey literature through April 2025. Twenty-eight publications met inclusion criteria.

The findings are pointed. Of the 20 tools designed specifically for the healthcare workforce, 45% targeted nurses. Psychometric properties were reported for 71% of included instruments, but evidence quality varied considerably across them. Most strikingly, only two tools met the study's criteria for being both valid and scoped to the full interprofessional healthcare workforce. For a health system with dozens of clinical roles interacting with a shared digital infrastructure, that is a narrow foundation.

The review also noted that 61% of the 28 included publications appeared in the last five years, signaling accelerating research interest. But volume has not yet translated into breadth: the field is still disproportionately weighted toward a single professional group.

## Sources

- [Measuring digital health competence among healthcare professionals: A rapid review of assessment tools](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1386505626001747) (International Journal of Medical Informatics)
- [A competency framework for digital public health in Europe: an updated scoping review](https://www.nature.com/articles/s44482-026-00023-9) (npj Digital Public Health (Nature))

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