TY - JOUR
T1 - Optimizing Digital Health Informatics Interventions Through Unobtrusive Quantitative Process Evaluations
AU - Gude, Wouter T.
AU - van der Veer, Sabine N.
AU - de Keizer, Nicolette F.
AU - Coiera, Enrico
AU - Peek, Niels
PY - 2016
Y1 - 2016
N2 - Health informatics interventions such as clinical decision support (CDS) and audit and feedback (A&F) are variably effective at improving care because the underlying mechanisms through which these interventions bring about change are poorly understood. This limits our possibilities to design better interventions. Process evaluations can be used to improve this understanding by assessing fidelity and quality of implementation, clarifying causal mechanisms, and identifying contextual factors associated with variation in outcomes. Coiera describes the intervention process as a series of stages extending from interactions to outcomes: the "information value chain". However, past process evaluations often did not assess the relationships between those stages. In this paper we argue that the chain can be measured quantitatively and unobtrusively in digital interventions thanks to the availability of electronic data that are a by-product of their use. This provides novel possibilities to study the mechanisms of informatics interventions in detail and inform essential design choices to optimize their efficacy
AB - Health informatics interventions such as clinical decision support (CDS) and audit and feedback (A&F) are variably effective at improving care because the underlying mechanisms through which these interventions bring about change are poorly understood. This limits our possibilities to design better interventions. Process evaluations can be used to improve this understanding by assessing fidelity and quality of implementation, clarifying causal mechanisms, and identifying contextual factors associated with variation in outcomes. Coiera describes the intervention process as a series of stages extending from interactions to outcomes: the "information value chain". However, past process evaluations often did not assess the relationships between those stages. In this paper we argue that the chain can be measured quantitatively and unobtrusively in digital interventions thanks to the availability of electronic data that are a by-product of their use. This provides novel possibilities to study the mechanisms of informatics interventions in detail and inform essential design choices to optimize their efficacy
M3 - Article
C2 - 27577453
SN - 0926-9630
VL - 228
SP - 594
EP - 598
JO - Studies in health technology and informatics
JF - Studies in health technology and informatics
ER -