ArticleNPJ digital medicine2026
Validating DigiHEALTHQUAL for measuring digital health effects on service quality in outpatient care in Germany.
Article in NPJ digital medicine, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
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Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The adoption of digital health solutions (DHS) in outpatient care is hindered by uncertainty regarding their non-clinical effects and a lack of validated instruments for standardized evaluation. Health care service quality (HCSQ) provides a theoretically grounded framework for assessing these effects, but no validated HCSQ-based instrument has been established. This study aimed to quantitatively validate DigiHEALTHQUAL and compare a theory-derived model structure with a data-derived alternative. We conducted a cross-sectional online survey among 1085 adult patients in Germany with experience using one of four DHS: online appointment booking, digital anamnesis, video consultation, or electronic health records. Psychometric validation included internal consistency analyses, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), exploratory factor analysis (EFA), and comparative model evaluation. The refined theory-derived seven-factor model excluding general satisfaction demonstrated good model fit and strong internal consistency, although discriminant validity between dimensions was limited. EFA yielded a more parsimonious four-factor structure with a dominant process-related factor. High inter-factor correlations supported a higher-order HCSQ structure. Overall, DigiHEALTHQUAL showed validity for assessing non-clinical DHS effects on HCSQ in outpatient care in Germany and supports standardized DHS evaluation in research and practice.
Identifiers
42827101What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.