TY - JOUR
T1 - Exploring the Intersection between Health Professionals' Learning and eHealth Data
T2 - Protocol for a Comprehensive Research Program in Practice Analytics in Health Care
AU - Janssen, Anna
AU - Talic, Stella
AU - Gasevic, Dragan
AU - Kay, Judy
AU - Shaw, Tim
N1 - Funding Information:
The research described in this protocol is funded through a project grant from the Digital Health Cooperative Research Centre (DHCRC). The DHCRC is established and supported by the Australian Government's Cooperative Research Centres Program. The DHCRC project primarily grants funding scholarships for higher-degree research candidates and postdoctoral research fellows. Author AJ is undertaking a postdoctoral research fellowship that is fully funded by the DHCRC.
Funding Information:
The research program described in this protocol is a problem-driven multidisciplinary research program between academic partners and the Digital Health Cooperative Research Centre (DHCRC), and industry partners made up of government and health service organizations. The research program is funded by the DHCRC [26]. Cooperative Research Centres are cofunded by the Australian government, industries, and universities to support applied research and development programs. In the context of this research program, a multidisciplinary team of researchers, scientists, and clinicians has been brought together to identify key industry problems and design a research program that addresses the abovementioned problems.
Funding Information:
Each doctoral research project is supported by a team comprising, at minimum, a primary academic supervisor with expertise in the research area, an industry supervisor with clinical or technological domain knowledge, and a postdoctoral fellow funded through the program. Figure 2 presents how inputs from academia and industry are harnessed to both design and deliver the Practice Analytics research program.
Publisher Copyright:
© Anna Janssen, Stella Talic, Dragan Gasevic, Judy Kay, Tim Shaw. Originally published in JMIR Research Protocols (https://www.researchprotocols.org), 09.12.2021. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIR Research Protocols, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on https://www.researchprotocols.org, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.
PY - 2021/12
Y1 - 2021/12
N2 - Background: There is an increasing amount of electronic data sitting within the health system. These data have untapped potential to improve clinical practice if extracted efficiently and harnessed to change the behavior of health professionals. Furthermore, there is an increasing expectation from the government and peak bodies that both individual health professionals and health care organizations will use electronic data for a range of applications, including improving health service delivery and informing clinical practice and professional accreditation. Objective: The aim of this research program is to make eHealth data captured within tertiary health care organizations more actionable to health professionals for use in practice reflection, professional development, and other quality improvement activities. Methods: A multidisciplinary approach was used to connect academic experts from core disciplines of health and medicine, education and learning sciences, and engineering and information communication technology with government and health service partners to identify key problems preventing the health care industry from using electronic data to support health professional learning. This multidisciplinary approach was used to design a large-scale research program to solve the problem of making eHealth data more accessible to health professionals for practice reflection. The program will be delivered over 5 years by doctoral candidates undertaking research projects with discrete aims that run in parallel to achieving this program's objectives. Results: The process used to develop the research program identified 7 doctoral research projects to answer the program objectives, split across 3 streams. Conclusions: This research program has the potential to successfully unpack electronic data siloed within clinical sites and enable health professionals to use them to reflect on their practice and deliver informed and improved care. The program will contribute to current practices by fostering stronger connections between industry and academia, interlinking doctoral research projects to solve complex problems, and creating new knowledge for clinical sites on how data can be used to understand and improve performance. Furthermore, the program aims to affect policy by developing insights on how professional development programs may be strengthened to enhance their alignment with clinical practice. The key contributions of this paper include the introduction of a new conceptualized research program, Practice Analytics in Health care, by describing the foundational academic disciplines that the program is formed of and presenting scientific methods for its design and development.
AB - Background: There is an increasing amount of electronic data sitting within the health system. These data have untapped potential to improve clinical practice if extracted efficiently and harnessed to change the behavior of health professionals. Furthermore, there is an increasing expectation from the government and peak bodies that both individual health professionals and health care organizations will use electronic data for a range of applications, including improving health service delivery and informing clinical practice and professional accreditation. Objective: The aim of this research program is to make eHealth data captured within tertiary health care organizations more actionable to health professionals for use in practice reflection, professional development, and other quality improvement activities. Methods: A multidisciplinary approach was used to connect academic experts from core disciplines of health and medicine, education and learning sciences, and engineering and information communication technology with government and health service partners to identify key problems preventing the health care industry from using electronic data to support health professional learning. This multidisciplinary approach was used to design a large-scale research program to solve the problem of making eHealth data more accessible to health professionals for practice reflection. The program will be delivered over 5 years by doctoral candidates undertaking research projects with discrete aims that run in parallel to achieving this program's objectives. Results: The process used to develop the research program identified 7 doctoral research projects to answer the program objectives, split across 3 streams. Conclusions: This research program has the potential to successfully unpack electronic data siloed within clinical sites and enable health professionals to use them to reflect on their practice and deliver informed and improved care. The program will contribute to current practices by fostering stronger connections between industry and academia, interlinking doctoral research projects to solve complex problems, and creating new knowledge for clinical sites on how data can be used to understand and improve performance. Furthermore, the program aims to affect policy by developing insights on how professional development programs may be strengthened to enhance their alignment with clinical practice. The key contributions of this paper include the introduction of a new conceptualized research program, Practice Analytics in Health care, by describing the foundational academic disciplines that the program is formed of and presenting scientific methods for its design and development.
KW - Continuing professional development
KW - Digital health
KW - Health informatics
KW - Health professions education
KW - Practice analytics in health care
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85121982253&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.2196/27984
DO - 10.2196/27984
M3 - Article
C2 - 34889768
AN - SCOPUS:85121982253
SN - 1929-0748
VL - 10
JO - JMIR Research Protocols
JF - JMIR Research Protocols
IS - 12
M1 - e27984
ER -
