Article type
Abstract
Background: Clinical practice guidelines support health care professionals and patients in providing appropriate, good quality-care. However, compliance with recommendations is often suboptimal. From 2021 to 2024, the Dutch government funded nine innovation-of-guidelines projects for developing innovative information and communications technology (ICT)-based methods and techniques to ensure up-to-date, accessible, and patient-centered recommendations. The innovations focus on using real world data (patient-reported, electronic health records, social media, registries) to support patients and health care professionals in their shared decision-making, methods for electronically connecting guidelines, and methods for the acceleration of the guideline development process.
Objectives: To systematically and transparently evaluate the impact of the innovation-of-guidelines projects and to create overarching insights on how these innovations can be used to optimize guideline development in the Netherlands.
Methods: To evaluate the innovation-of-guideline projects, we employed an impact analysis according to the Theory of Change methodology (Frey 2018). Activities carried out within the innovation-of-guideline projects are related to their output and short- and long-term change to provide insight into how and why change occurs and to clarify and evaluate underlying assumptions for this change. We used the project protocols to assess the intended change and progress reports, and we used interviews to assess achieved change and lessons learned. To validate the results, we organized focus groups with patients, health care professionals, and other relevant stakeholders.
Results: Preliminary results show that the developed ICT applications have the potential to contribute to the actuality, accessibility, and patient-centeredness of guidelines. The innovations cover various aspects of the evidence ecosystem, with the potential to create synergy when combined. Special attention needs to be paid to generalizability of the project results outside the context in which they were developed. The final results will be available August 2024.
Conclusions: By aggregating the impact and lessons learned from innovation-of-guideline projects, we aim to create overarching insights that can serve as a basis for a broadly endorsed vision on guideline development in the Netherlands. Through analyzing the innovations, we aim to contribute to a trustworthy, modern guideline development process tailored to the needs of patients and health care professionals to bridge the gap between guidelines and daily practice and to optimize the quality of health care.
Objectives: To systematically and transparently evaluate the impact of the innovation-of-guidelines projects and to create overarching insights on how these innovations can be used to optimize guideline development in the Netherlands.
Methods: To evaluate the innovation-of-guideline projects, we employed an impact analysis according to the Theory of Change methodology (Frey 2018). Activities carried out within the innovation-of-guideline projects are related to their output and short- and long-term change to provide insight into how and why change occurs and to clarify and evaluate underlying assumptions for this change. We used the project protocols to assess the intended change and progress reports, and we used interviews to assess achieved change and lessons learned. To validate the results, we organized focus groups with patients, health care professionals, and other relevant stakeholders.
Results: Preliminary results show that the developed ICT applications have the potential to contribute to the actuality, accessibility, and patient-centeredness of guidelines. The innovations cover various aspects of the evidence ecosystem, with the potential to create synergy when combined. Special attention needs to be paid to generalizability of the project results outside the context in which they were developed. The final results will be available August 2024.
Conclusions: By aggregating the impact and lessons learned from innovation-of-guideline projects, we aim to create overarching insights that can serve as a basis for a broadly endorsed vision on guideline development in the Netherlands. Through analyzing the innovations, we aim to contribute to a trustworthy, modern guideline development process tailored to the needs of patients and health care professionals to bridge the gap between guidelines and daily practice and to optimize the quality of health care.