Preparing the Workforce for Digital Health Technologies and Virtual Care

Digital health and virtual care continue to expand rapidly, offering transformative opportunities to enhance healthcare delivery and accessibility. Recent advancements in mobile health solutions, artificial intelligence (AI), predictive analytics, telehealth services, and remote monitoring tools have enabled healthcare systems to reach underserved populations, bridge geographical barriers, and leverage clinical resources more efficiently. Nonetheless, the successful implementation of these opportunities requires a health workforce able to effectively implement, manage, and adapt to these technological innovations. Related areas of health professional practice, such as telemedicine and telenursing, continue to grow across health delivery systems and contexts. But questions remain regarding the skill sets required, the strategies needed to foster digital health literacy, and the educational and regulatory frameworks that will best support health professionals and carers in successfully utilizing digital health technologies and virtual models of care.

Significant disparities persist in digital proficiency across different segments of the workforce, with variable acceptance and use of new tools by healthcare professionals. Resistance is often noted in response to cost, workflow changes or perceived threats to established practices. While curriculum updates, upskilling initiatives, and interprofessional education programs are being developed, gaps remain in regulatory requirements, consistent competency descriptions and assessments, scalable training approaches, and assurance of safe care standards. There is also a need for sustained efforts to ensure that ethical and practical safety considerations are addressed as digital technologies and virtual health are increasingly embedded in care models.

This Research Topic aims to critically explore and advance knowledge on the preparation of the health workforce for the realities of digital health and virtual care. The central objective is to identify, analyse, and disseminate strategies that support safe and effective practice, including competency description and development; educational and regulatory standards; curriculum enhancement; digital literacy improvement; and effective change management across all levels of healthcare delivery.
Submissions are encouraged to address questions such as: How should regulatory authorities and educators respond to the changing realities of clinical practice? What competencies are essential for effective and safe digital health and virtual care delivery? How can education and training programs be designed or reformed to optimize digital readiness for both current and future health professionals? What models and frameworks best facilitate safe, effective, and equitable virtual care practices across health service delivery settings? How can health professionals best support digital literacy among health service users and their families, particularly within socioeconomically disadvantaged and marginalized populations?
Further, this Research Topic seeks to investigate approaches to fostering critical thinking skills beyond reliance on algorithms, promoting interprofessional collaboration in virtual environments, and supporting health service users and carers.

The scope of this topic focuses on workforce preparation, education, program accreditation, and practice standards for digital (e-) health and virtual care and the translation of these systems into practice. It excludes research related to the technical development of specific devices, or digital solutions. The Research Topic welcomes contributions examining local, national, or global perspectives and is limited to interventions and frameworks involving people, such as clinicians, health professional regulators, support staff, educators, consumers of healthcare and lay carers, rather than technology components themselves.

To further explore workforce capacity-building for digital health and virtual care, we welcome articles addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:
• Competency requirements for digital health and virtual care practice
• Strategies for increasing digital health literacy across the health workforce and among educators
• Mitigation of education practice gaps related to digital health and virtual care
• Models of care delivery that ensure safe, effective, and scalable virtual practices
• Emerging areas of specialty practice, including telemedicine and telenursing
• Effective and ethical use of AI support tools
• Approaches to change management, including technology acceptance and overcoming resistance
• Health professional regulatory standards related to program content for preparing a digitally competent workforce
• Educational innovations in upskilling, curriculum design, pedagogy, and assessment for digital health
• Clinical placement requirements and guidelines for telehealth-related learning and teaching
• Support structures and strategies for interprofessional virtual care
• Best practices and frameworks for safe virtual health assessment and call management
• Encouraging critical thinking and reflective practice beyond algorithmic processes
• Opportunities and challenges in preparing informal caregivers and lay people for participation in digital health
• Risk mitigation in the implementation and delivery of digital health systems and virtual models of care
• Healthcare consumer perspectives on using digital and virtual models of care

We invite reviews, original research (qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods), case studies, opinion pieces, and policy briefs related to these themes. Manuscripts focused on the technical description or development of systems and devices are outside the scope of this collection.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Classification
• Clinical Trial
• Community Case Study
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Classification
• Clinical Trial
• Community Case Study
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Review
• Study Protocol
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Health Workforce, Digital Health, Virtual Care, Digital Health Technologies

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.