Evaluating eHealth

In Fall 2009 PLOS Medicine published a three part series examining the emergence of eHealth—the use of electronic tools in delivering health care—and its benefits and challenges worldwide. In the first paper, Lorraine Catwell and Aziz Sheikh, the Guest Editor of the series, argue that until eHealth interventions are "fit for purpose," health care professionals are unlikely to adopt them. They propose an evaluative process for the design, development, and deployment of eHealth interventions. David Bates and Adam Wright's paper explores international collaborations in delivering and evaluating Health, and how these collaborations can be further researched. In the final paper, Richard Lilford and Mike Pringle propose a set of scientific principles for evaluating highly complex service interventions such as IT systems, as an alternative to external formative assessments.

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