Naveen Madhavan
Digital Health and Care Wales
The aspiration of all healthcare leaders is to obtain optimal value from their systems and services. However, value has multiple meanings depending on the individual who uses it and the contexts to which it is referred. In terms of understanding the value of healthcare systems,research has been limited or fragmented to offer a framework that users can apply the to measure the value derived from their healthcare systems.
In 2019, research undertaken by Dr Naveen Madhavan from Digital Health and Care Wales and a Fellow at the University of South Wales helped identify 14 system-related value attributes for a clinical information system through a qualitative study using the Welsh Clinical Portal as a case study. The value attributes identified by users in secondary care were – accessibility, accuracy, availability, communication, consistency, dependability, differentiation, integration, intuition, process, relevance. safety, speed and support.
Further, a follow-on quantitative study enabled these 14 attributes to be ranked according to their importance that varied according to different users such as doctors, consultants, nurses and pharmacists and locations at various health boards in Wales.
Therefore, this project will develop a value assessment instrument incorporating these 14 attributes to enable IT managers, service leads and clinicians to identify areas of their healthcare system that are critical to users. This insight will inform service development or enhancement activities that will improve service performance and enable users at points of care to function effectively.
Once developed and tested, the value assessment instrument will be made available to stakeholders in Wales that will provide them with a clearer understanding of how systems should be customised through system design that will suit different user behaviours and specialised activities.
