Development and formative evaluation of the e-Health Implementation Toolkit (e-HIT).
BACKGROUND
The use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) or e-Health is seen as essential for a modern, cost-effective health service. However, there are well documented problems with implementation of e-Health initiatives, despite the existence of a great deal of research into how best to implement e-Health (an example of the gap between research and practice). This paper reports on the development and formative evaluation of an e-Health Implementation Toolkit (e-HIT) which aims to summarise and synthesise new and existing research on implementation of e-Health initiatives, and present it to senior managers in a user-friendly format.


RESULTS
The content of the e-HIT was derived by combining data from a systematic review of reviews of barriers and facilitators to implementation of e-Health initiatives with qualitative data derived from interviews of "implementers", that is people who had been charged with implementing an e-Health initiative. These data were summarised, synthesised and combined with the constructs from the Normalisation Process Model. The software for the toolkit was developed by a commercial company (RocketScience). Formative evaluation was undertaken by obtaining user feedback. There are three components to the toolkit--a section on background and instructions for use aimed at novice users; the toolkit itself; and the report generated by completing the toolkit. It is available to download from http://www.ucl.ac.uk/pcph/research/ehealth/documents/e-HIT.xls.


CONCLUSIONS
The e-HIT shows potential as a tool for enhancing future e-Health implementations. Further work is needed to make it fully web-enabled, and to determine its predictive potential for future implementations.
E-Health Unit, Research Department of Primary Care and Population Health, University College London, Upper Floor 3, Royal Free Hospital, Rowland Hill Street, London NW3 2PF, UK. elizabeth.murray@ucl.ac.uk
Elizabeth
E
Murray
Carl
C
May
Frances
F
Mair
D000288:Administrative Personnel / Q000193:education; D017408:Guidelines as Topic; D006284:Health Plan Implementation / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D008491:Medical Informatics Applications; D017149:Private Sector; D012984:Software; D017216:Telemedicine; D006113:United Kingdom; D014584:User-Computer Interface