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Background Digital health technologies hold promise to enhance patient-related outcomes, to support health care staff by reducing their workload, and to improve the coordination of care. As key users of digital health technologies, health care workers are crucial to enable a meaningful digital transformation of health care. Digital health literacy and digital skills should become prerequisite competencies for health professionals to facilitate the implementation and leverage the potential of digital technologies to improve health. Objective We aimed to assess European medical students’ perceived knowledge and opinions toward digital health, the status of digital health implementation in medical education, and the students’ most pressing needs. Methods The explanatory design of our mixed methods study was based on an online, anonymous, self-administered survey targeted toward European medical students. A linear regression analysis was used to identify the influence of the year of medical studies on the responses. Additional analysis was performed by grouping the responses by the self-evaluated frequency of eHealth technology use. Written responses to four qualitative questions in the survey were analyzed using an inductive approach. Results The survey received a total of 451 responses from 39 European countries, and there were respondents for every year of medical studies. The majority of respondents saw advantages in the use of digital health. While 40.6% (183/451) felt prepared to work in a digitized health care system, more than half (240/451, 53.2%) evaluated their eHealth skills as poor or very poor. Medical students considered lack of education to be the reason for this, with 84.9% (383/451) agreeing or strongly agreeing that more digital health education should be implemented in the medical curriculum. Students demanded introductory and specific eHealth courses covering data management, ethical aspects, legal frameworks, research and entrepreneurial opportunities, role in public health and health systems, communication skills, and practical training. The emphasis lay on tailoring learning to future job requirements and interprofessional education. Conclusions This study shows a lack of digital health-related formats in medical education and a perceived lack of digital health literacy among European medical students. Our findings indicate a gap between the willingness of medical students to take an active role by becoming key players in the digital transformation of health care and the education that they receive through their faculties.

Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory skin disease showing a high burden due to its aesthetic, social, psychological, and quality of life (QoL) implications which also affect patient‐physician relationship and, consequently, the adherence to treatments. Limited data on the natural history of psoriasis and factors predicting its prognosis are available. The aim of this study was to investigate patients' global characteristics, including treatments, associated with QoL impairment in psoriasis. Questionnaires evaluating sociodemographic features and Dermatology Life Quality Index (DLQI) were administered to patients. Multiple regression analysis was performed to evaluate factors associated with a large effect on patient's life (DLQI > 10), moderate effect on patient's life (DLQI ≥ 6 ≤ 10), small effect on patient's life (DLQI ≥ 2 < 6), and no effect on patient's life (DLQI < 2). Overall, 1052 consecutive patients affected by mild‐to‐severe psoriasis were recruited. Our logistic regression analysis showed that the influencing factors for a large effect on QoL were living in Southern Italy, depression, psoriatic arthritis, and psoriasis localization on facial, intertriginous, palmoplantar, trunk and scalp regions. For a moderate effect on patient's life, phototherapy and non‐biological systemic therapies resulted to be the predictive factors. Mild psoriasis, living in social housing and the isolated involvement of scalp psoriasis had a small effect on QoL. Lastly, mild psoriasis and current biological therapies including anti‐IL‐12/23, anti‐IL‐17, and anti‐TNF‐α were positively associated with no life quality impairment. Perceived quality of life impairment in psoriasis not only depends on the skin disease but rather on patients' global characteristics. Therefore, the individual background of these patients should be respected in the selection of treatment options.

To better understand and interpret the trends in cutaneous research, we carried out a network analysis of all the titles of the submitted abstracts of the annual meetings of the European Society of Dermatological Research (ESDR), including the International Investigative Dermatology (IID) meetings between 2010 and 2019. Network analysis is a data science tool to process, analyze, and visualize big sets of data. As expected, psoriasis was the frontrunner in each of the annual meetings, followed by dermatitis and melanoma. Interestingly, alopecia, acne, squamous cell carcinoma, pruritus, basal cell carcinoma, and hidradenitis suppurativa were among the next most frequently named diseases and/or terms. We also looked at diversity to assess how broad the interest of the submitting community is and to identify whether "blockbusters" such as psoriasis and atopic dermatitis expand in expense of other interests. In contrast to our expectations, the diversity of submissions to the ESDR annual meetings remained high over the 10 years of our observation period. Interestingly, the diversity increased in the years of the IID, indicating an outreach to other research areas worldwide compared with the ESDR meetings. This is true for both 2013 in Edinburgh, UK, and 2018 in Orlando, USA. During these meetings, this rise in diversity was associated with a relative decrease of the three most often named diseases. Network analysis thus may be a useful tool for research societies like the ESDR to identify trends and allocate resources such as reviewers and sessions accordingly. In addition, it can serve as quality control monitoring whether the ESDR continues to offer a platform for all researchers in cutaneous biology or implements or focuses on emerging fields.

BACKGROUND Digital health technologies promise to enhance patient-related outcomes, to support the healthcare staff by reducing their workload and improve the coordination of care. As key users of digital health technologies, healthcare workers are crucial to enable a meaningful digital transformation of healthcare. Digital health literacy and digital skills are to become prerequisite competencies for health professionals to facilitate the implementation and leverage the potential of digital technologies to improve health. OBJECTIVE We aimed to assess European medical students’ perceived knowledge and opinions towards digital health, the status of digital health implementation in medical education, and the students’ most pressing needs. METHODS The explanatory design of our mixed-methods study was based on an online, anonymous, self-administered survey targeted towards European medical students. The quantitative analysis was performed using R statistical language; qualitative data was analyzed applying an inductive categorization approach using MaxQDA 2020 software. RESULTS The survey received a total of 451 responses from 39 European countries and all years of medical studies. The majority of respondents saw advantages in the use of digital health. More than half (53%) evaluated their eHealth skills as poor or very poor and 40% felt prepared to work in a digitized healthcare system. Medical students considered the reason for this a lack of education, with 85 % agreeing or strongly agreeing that digital health education should be more implemented in the medical curriculum. Students demanded introductory and specific eHealth courses covering data management, ethical aspects, legal frameworks, research and entrepreneurial opportunities,, its role in public health and health systems, communication skills, and practical training with eHealth technologies. The emphasis lay on tailoring learning to future job requirements and interprofessional education. CONCLUSIONS This study shows a lack of digital health-related formats in medical education and a perceived lack of digital (health) literacy among European medical students. Our findings indicate a gap between the willingness of medical students to take an active role by becoming key players in the digital transformation of healthcare, and the education they receive through their faculties. CLINICALTRIAL