Why Do Evaluations of eHealth Programs Fail? An Alternative Set of Guiding Principles

Why Do Evaluations of eHealth Programs Fail? An Alternative Set of Guiding Principles
Much has been written about why electronic health (eHealth) initiatives fail. Less attention has been paid to why evaluations of such initiatives fail to deliver the insights expected of them. PLoS Medicine has published three papers offering a "robust" and "scientific" approach to eHealth evaluation. One recommended systematically addressing each part of a "chain of reasoning", at the centre of which was the program's goals. Another proposed a quasi-experimental step-wedge design, in which late adopters of eHealth innovations serve as controls for early adopters. Interestingly, the authors of the empirical study flagged by these authors as an exemplary illustration of the step-wedge design subsequently abandoned it in favour of a largely qualitative case study because they found it impossible to establish anything approaching a controlled experiment in the study's complex, dynamic, and heavily politicised context.

The approach to evaluation presented in the previous PLoS Medicine series rests on a set of assumptions that philosophers of science call "positivist": that there is an external reality that can be objectively measured; that phenomena such as "project goals", "outcomes", and "formative feedback" can be precisely and unambiguously defined; that facts and values are clearly distinguishable; and that generalisable statements about the relationship between input and output variables are possible.

Read on-line: Why Do Evaluations of eHealth Programs Fail? An Alternative Set of Guiding Principles

Download from eHealthNews.eu Portal's mirror: Why Do Evaluations of eHealth Programs Fail? An Alternative Set of Guiding Principles (.pdf, 99 KB).

Citation: Greenhalgh T, Russell J (2010) Why Do Evaluations of eHealth Programs Fail? An Alternative Set of Guiding Principles. PLoS Med 7(11): e1000360. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000360

Copyright: © 2010 Greenhalgh, Russell. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Most Popular Now

Stepping Hill Hospital Announced as SPAR…

Stepping Hill Hospital, part of Stockport NHS Foundation Trust, has replaced its bedside units with state-of-the art devices running a full range of information, engagement, communications and productivity apps, to...

DMEA 2025: Digital Health Worldwide in B…

8 - 10 April 2025, Berlin, Germany. From the AI Act, to the potential of the European Health Data Space, to the power of patient data in Scandinavia - DMEA 2025...

Is AI in Medicine Playing Fair?

As artificial intelligence (AI) rapidly integrates into health care, a new study by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai reveals that all generative AI models may...

Generative AI's Diagnostic Capabili…

The use of generative AI for diagnostics has attracted attention in the medical field and many research papers have been published on this topic. However, because the evaluation criteria were...

New System for the Early Detection of Au…

A team from the Human-Tech Institute-Universitat Politècnica de València has developed a new system for the early detection of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) using virtual reality and artificial intelligence. The...

Diagnoses and Treatment Recommendations …

A new study led by Prof. Dan Zeltzer, a digital health expert from the Berglas School of Economics at Tel Aviv University, compared the quality of diagnostic and treatment recommendations...

AI Tool can Track Effectiveness of Multi…

A new artificial intelligence (AI) tool that can help interpret and assess how well treatments are working for patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) has been developed by UCL researchers. AI uses...

Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust g…

Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust has marked an important milestone in connecting busy radiologists across large parts of South East England, following the successful go live of Sectra's enterprise...

DMEA 2025 Ends with Record Attendance an…

8 - 10 April 2025, Berlin, Germany. DMEA 2025 came to a successful close with record attendance and an impressive program. 20,500 participants attended Europe's leading digital health event over the...

Dr Jason Broch Joins the Highland Market…

The Highland Marketing advisory board has welcomed a new member - Dr Jason Broch, a GP and director with a strong track record in the NHS and IT-enabled transformation. Dr Broch...

AI-Driven Smart Devices to Transform Hea…

AI-powered, internet-connected medical devices have the potential to revolutionise healthcare by enabling early disease detection, real-time patient monitoring, and personalised treatments, a new study suggests. They are already saving lives...

Multi-Resistance in Bacteria Predicted b…

An AI model trained on large amounts of genetic data can predict whether bacteria will become antibiotic-resistant. The new study shows that antibiotic resistance is more easily transmitted between genetically...