Covid-19 Policy Responses, Digital Health Apps and Data Sharing: Attitudes of Swiss Medical Students

Abstract

Background: In this paper we present findings from a survey with 256 medical students in Switzerland about their perception of Covid-19 public health measures, their attitude towards digital health apps to respond to the pandemic, and whether the Covid-19 crisis changed their willingness to share their health data in the future for public health research purposes.

Results: Results show that most respondents indicated to be somewhat negatively affected by the pandemic, but deemed the public health policy responses to the pandemic in Switzerland as just right or even as slightly too unrestrictive. Most respondents evaluate the use of apps to respond to the pandemic as positive, and 61.7% indicated that they used the contact tracing app and 97.6% the immunity certificate app. The latter was evaluated more positively than the former. They indicated that a better communication about its benefits or the possibility to share health data for research (e.g. by listing Covid-19 symptoms and vaccination status) would improve the contact tracing app. Nearly all respondents indicated that they would share their health data or samples for research purposes in the future. The types of data they would be willing to share are mostly questionnaires about their health status, blood samples and other biological samples, with social media being the least willing to share. Our findings highlight that most respondents believe that their attitude towards sharing data for public health research did not change during or with the Covid-19 pandemic.

Conclusions: Recent developments in digital health app use were fuelled by the Covid-19 pandemic and the public – as a central actor – defined social trends with regard to digital health app uptake and willingness to share health data. With this survey we aimed to fill the gap of empirically examining how Swiss medical students – a young, technology- and medicine-inclined subpopulation, perceived the Covid-19 pandemic response, how they evaluate the related use of apps to respond to the pandemic as well as their willingness to share data for health research. The results may shed light on how the Covid-19-related use of technology and health data is changing the health landscape in Switzerland.