{"doi":"10.1093/jamia/ocaf151","title":"A self-report measure of digital skills needed to use digital health tools among older adults—the Skills Measurement and Readiness Training for Digital Health (SMART Digital Health) Scale","abstract":"OBJECTIVE: To identify a brief scale to accurately assess digital skills among older adults for use in identifying need for support to use digital health tools. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Patients age ≥50 speaking English, Spanish, or Cantonese completed surveys (n = 186) assessing digital health access, use, and skills. A subsample (n = 101) completed observational task assessments gauging competency on 4 tasks essential to digital health skills: (1) launch a video visit from an email/text message hyperlink, (2) visit a specific health website, (3) sign up for a patient portal, and (4) log in to a patient portal. We used exploratory factor analysis, receiver operator characteristic, logistic regression, and dominance analysis methods to identify and evaluate a scale measuring digital skills essential to using digital health tools. RESULTS: We found that a 9-item scale demonstrated unidimensionality and reliability (Cronbach's alpha 0.93) in measuring digital skills. Mean score was 19.3 out of 36. For each task, handout/video support was inadequate in facilitating completion for one-quarter of participants. We found high accuracy of the scale in predicting digital health competency (area under the curve 0.77-0.88). DISCUSSION: The Skills Measurement and Readiness Training for Digital Health (SMART Digital Health) scale is a measure of digital skills with evidence of reliability and validity to be used as a diagnostic tool to identify patients requiring support to use digital health tools. CONCLUSION: This early work supports the identification of patients with digital literacy needs who may require interventions to effectively engage in digital health communication and management.","journal":"Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association","year":2025,"id":542336,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":2,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.677,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":360985,"name":"Courtney R. Lyles","orcid":"0000-0002-1111-8595","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":790766,"name":"Hyunjin Cindy Kim","orcid":"0000-0002-3322-7215","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1274675,"name":"Isabel Luna","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1273698,"name":"Jeanette Wong","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1245787,"name":"Naomi Lopez-Solano","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1431413,"name":"Junhong Li","orcid":"0000-0002-4864-0897","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1366339,"name":"Andersen Yang","orcid":"0009-0008-4446-0849","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":4661,"name":"Jorge A. Rodriguez","orcid":"0000-0002-1833-6819","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":771736,"name":"Oanh Kieu Nguyen","orcid":"0000-0002-4614-0215","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":469931,"name":"Alejandra Casillas","orcid":"0000-0003-4229-7466","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":294023,"name":"Emilia H. De Marchis","orcid":"0000-0003-1782-1609","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":44595,"name":"Anita L. Stewart","orcid":"0000-0002-4967-9013","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":75618,"name":"Torsten B. Neilands","orcid":"0000-0001-7936-9123","position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":356244,"name":"Elaine C. Khoong","orcid":"0000-0002-2514-3572","position":14,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":699746,"name":"Lina Tieu","orcid":"0000-0002-9980-0774","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":45,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:52:55.809501Z","pmid":"40971609","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}