Article type
Abstract
"Background: The Agency for Care Effectiveness (ACE), under the Ministry of Health, Singapore, develops clinical guidelines, referred to as ACE Clinical Guidances (ACGs), to address key care gaps and evidence changes identified in specific areas of clinical practice. Serving as a common starting point nationally for clinical decision-making, healthcare professionals (HCPs) are encouraged to adopt the evidence-based recommendations. A comprehensive dissemination strategy is necessary to enhance HCPs’ awareness and access to the guidelines prior to adoption.
Objective: To develop and implement a dissemination strategy to optimise readership of ACGs and resultant adoption of evidence-based recommendations.
Methods: The strategy development process is guided by the following steps:
1)Identifying primary care doctors and allied health professionals as the target audience
2)Identifying potential touchpoints to engage with HCPs
3)Assessing the HCP reach for each engagement channels to determine effectiveness, including evaluating the number of HCPs in our database for eDMs, audience demographic and readership numbers for newsletter advertorials.
4)Establishing additional criteria such as suitability, existing capabilities, ease of implementation and data availability for performance tracking to inform the selection of engagement channels.
Results: Each ACG leverages on five dissemination channels: 1) ACE website; 2) eDMs; 3) LinkedIn; 4) newsletter advertorials; and 5) Intranets of all public healthcare institutions to enhance accessibility. To promote adoption of recommendations, subject matter experts and HCP peers are actively engaged to share the value of the ACG on these platforms. Dissemination frequency is spread across a period of one year to ensure consistent and sustained publicity of each ACG.
For example, the ACG on ‘Type 2 diabetes mellitus: Personalising management with non-insulin medications’ initially garnered 1,862 page views a day after publication on the website. However, following dissemination efforts through platforms such as eDMs and LinkedIn, the number of page views surged to 4,464, representing a significant 140% increase.
Conclusion: A dissemination strategy is a fundamental step to extend reach and accessibility of ACGs to HCPs. While it remains uncertain whether enhanced access directly leads to adoption of evidence-based recommendations, an implementation strategy complements this effort to effectively promote the adoption of evidence-based recommendations.
"
Objective: To develop and implement a dissemination strategy to optimise readership of ACGs and resultant adoption of evidence-based recommendations.
Methods: The strategy development process is guided by the following steps:
1)Identifying primary care doctors and allied health professionals as the target audience
2)Identifying potential touchpoints to engage with HCPs
3)Assessing the HCP reach for each engagement channels to determine effectiveness, including evaluating the number of HCPs in our database for eDMs, audience demographic and readership numbers for newsletter advertorials.
4)Establishing additional criteria such as suitability, existing capabilities, ease of implementation and data availability for performance tracking to inform the selection of engagement channels.
Results: Each ACG leverages on five dissemination channels: 1) ACE website; 2) eDMs; 3) LinkedIn; 4) newsletter advertorials; and 5) Intranets of all public healthcare institutions to enhance accessibility. To promote adoption of recommendations, subject matter experts and HCP peers are actively engaged to share the value of the ACG on these platforms. Dissemination frequency is spread across a period of one year to ensure consistent and sustained publicity of each ACG.
For example, the ACG on ‘Type 2 diabetes mellitus: Personalising management with non-insulin medications’ initially garnered 1,862 page views a day after publication on the website. However, following dissemination efforts through platforms such as eDMs and LinkedIn, the number of page views surged to 4,464, representing a significant 140% increase.
Conclusion: A dissemination strategy is a fundamental step to extend reach and accessibility of ACGs to HCPs. While it remains uncertain whether enhanced access directly leads to adoption of evidence-based recommendations, an implementation strategy complements this effort to effectively promote the adoption of evidence-based recommendations.
"