Digital health in Portugal: Exploring perceptions, barriers, and experiences through a focus group study

Purpose Digital health (DH) has been rapidly expanding over the last years, with new technologies aimed at improving healthcare services quality and effectiveness and patient empowerment. However, DH adoption and usage is not equal to everyone, and is heavily dependent on several individual and contextual factors. Thus, with this study, we aim to explore the main perceptions, barriers, and experiences with DH in Portugal. Methods This study was conducted using a qualitative research design, in the form of focus groups. Participants were recruited through the dissemination of the study via e-mail, through several institutions, and social media posts. The focus group sessions were conducted with six to eight participants, via Zoom videoconference. All the sessions were recorded, transcribed verbatim, and a thematic analysis was performed. Results Thirty-four participants agreed to take part in this study, and five focus group sessions were conducted, until saturation was achieved. After thematic analysis, seven main themes were identified: 1) DH concepts; 2) experiences with DH; 3) health information; 4) advantages of DH; 5) concerns towards DH; 6) barriers to DH access and use; 7) solutions to improve the DH framework. Conclusion Despite the digital health framework improvement throughout the years, a lot needs to be done to make digital health truly accessible to everyone in Portugal. Concerns regarding equitable access, digital health literacy, infrastructure, patient-healthcare professional relationship and AI are some of the many dimensions that must be considered when working towards digital transformation in healthcare.