Digital Health Technology Awareness and Attitude among Nigerian Health Care Workers during the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has further exposed the potential of digital health tools to increase access and improve the quality of care within health systems. This descriptive cross-sectional study assessed Nigerian Health Care Workers’ (HCW) awareness of digital health technologies used during the COVID-19 pandemic and their confidence level and willingness to use digital health technologies. 142 Nigerian HCWs were randomly recruited through an online survey over the one-year period between August 2020 and August 2021. 7% of respondents were aware of any technology tools that were used in their workplace during the COVID-19 pandemic and 23.2% were aware of health technology tools that were used by other health facilities during the COVID-19 response. 75.4% of respondents were willing to use a health technology tool for the COVID-19 response and 45.1% were confident in the use of digital health tools such as ​​mobile Health (mhealth) tools for healthcare purposes. A significant association was observed between confidence in digital health tools and the willingness to adopt them (chi-square = 21.23, p < 0.001). The low level of awareness of covid-19-related digital health technology tools among the Nigerian HCWs in this survey shows that there is a need to increase and improve digital health education among HCWs. The higher level of willingness to use digital health tools when compared with confidence to use the tools (75.4% versus 45.1%) shows that more needs to be done to increase the confidence level of HCWs in the use of digital health tools which was observed to be highly correlated with their willingness to use digital health tools. Recommendations based on this study include the need to improve the quality and accuracy of digital health tools through supportive policies as this can be helpful in improving the confidence level of HCWs in the use of digital health tools and technologies and consequently improve their willingness to use these tools in their work. There is also the need to create more awareness of these tools among HCWs through conferences, symposia and HCW continuing education platforms.