Abstract
In the first in a series of three articles on evaluating eHealth, Aziz Sheikh and Lorraine Catwell outline the background to the series and discuss the importance of evaluating the widespread investments in and adoption of information communication technology in health care.
Highlights
N Until eHealth interventions are ‘‘fit for purpose’’, health care professionals are unlikely to adopt them and this risks implementation failure
N We argue that continuous systematic evaluations of eHealth interventions are needed
Health care is in what Heathfield has described as ‘‘a catch 22 situation’’ [17]: until we develop eHealth interventions that are ‘‘fit for purpose’’ [18]—and early evaluations suggest they are frequently not [19]—health care professionals are, justifiably, reluctant to adopt these new technologies
Summary
N eHealth interventions will play a substantial role in shaping health care systems in the 21st century. Take the example of poorly developed computer decision support functionality, which can result in the issuing of erroneous prescribing support and advice, as was demonstrated by Fernando et al in their assessment of primary care prescribing software [33] Another cause for concern is the roll-out of applications that allow round-the-clock, multiple access points to patient data through health portals such as Google Health, Microsoft’s HealthVault, and the National Health Service’s HealthSpace [27,28,29]. Example, the replacement of paper-based records with electronic health records, it is important to be able to describe the vision, description of a problem or need; for success or failure of the intervention being i.e., what will the new health service look example, the need to improve access to studied It is often difficult like, including identifying in as much detail health care information for both profes- to generalise from results obtained using as possible measures of success/benefits, sionals and patients. Whilst RCTs and similar experimental design methods may be appropriate for
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