Design and Evaluation in eHealth: Challenges and Implications for an Interdisciplinary Field

By Claudia Pagliari. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 2007

301 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Much has been written about insufficient user involvement in the design of eHealth applications, the lack of evidence demonstrating impact, and the difficulties these bring for adoption. Part of the problem lies in the differing languages, cultures, motives, and operational constraints of producers and evaluators of eHealth systems and services. This paper reflects on the benefits of and barriers to interdisciplinary collaboration in eHealth, focusing particularly on the relationship between software developers and health services researchers. It argues that the common pattern of silo or parallel working may be ameliorated by developing mutual awareness and respect for each others’ methods, epistemologies, and contextual drivers and by recognizing and harnessing potential synergies. Similarities and differences between models and techniques used in both communities are highlighted in order to illustrate the potential for integrated approaches and the strengths of unique paradigms. By sharing information about our research approaches and seeking to actively collaborate in the process of design and evaluation, the aim of achieving technologies that are truly user-informed, fit for context, high quality, and of demonstrated value is more likely to be realized. This may involve embracing new ways of working jointly that are unfamiliar to the stakeholders involved and that challenge disciplinary conventions. It also has policy implications for agencies commissioning research and development in this area.

Subfields: General Health Professions, Health Information Management, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4ff2221b9dbd5e6fdf3c5970fffe7a3e67c6a025

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Citations in the corpus

The Person-Based Approach to Intervention Development: Application to Digital Health-Related Behavior Change Interventions (2015, background): “There is widespread consensus in the eHealth research community that eliciting and addressing the needs and perspective of the intended intervention user is a vital part of good intervention development [1-3] to ensure (at a minimum) that interventions are usable and engaging.”
The Impact of eHealth on the Quality and Safety of Health Care: A Systematic Overview (2011, background): “Another important development that is needed is the collaboration of different disciplines in evaluation [158,159].”
Realizing the Potential of Behavioral Intervention Technologies (2013, methodology): “…be better met using strategies such as low-fidelity prototyping (Rudd, Stern, & Isensee, 1996), A/B testing (Hekler et al., 2013), iterative design (Pagliari, 2007), and agile development (Martin, 2003) to more rapidly create and refine BITs before evaluation with traditional psychological methods…”
A Holistic Framework to Improve the Uptake and Impact of eHealth Technologies (2011, unknown): “This is noted in several of the reviewed frameworks [23,29,48,51,60].”