Best practices in scaling digital health in low and middle income countries

Healthcare challenges in low and middle income countries (LMICs) have been the focus of many digital initiatives that have aimed to improve both access to healthcare and the quality of healthcare delivery. Moving beyond the initial phase of piloting and experimentation, these initiatives are now more clearly focused on the need for effective scaling and integration to provide sustainable benefit to healthcare systems.

Innovation of the governance of integrated care

Interest in integrated care is growing. This is reflected in the rising numbers of scientific publications, IJIC’s increased impact factor and the increasing number of participants at IFIC’s international conferences. It is stimulating to see that organizations like the World Health Organisation are developing conceptual frameworks that embrace integrated care. At the same time we know that integrated care does not become reality automatically; it takes a long timeframe. That can be conflicting with ambitions like ‘implementing good practices as fast as possible’ and with the pressure to deliver results in politically set tight time frames.

Public involvement in health research systems: a governance framework

Growing interest in public involvement in health research has led to organisational and policy change. Additionally, an emerging body of policy-oriented scholarship has begun to identify the organisational and network arrangements that shape public involvement activity. Such developments suggest the need to clearly conceptualise and characterise public involvement in health research in terms of governance.

Health policy and systems research: the future of the field

Health policy and systems research (HPSR) has changed considerably over the last 20 years, but its main purpose remains to inform and influence health policies and systems. Whereas goals that underpin health systems have endured – such as a focus on health equity – contexts and priorities change, research methods progress, and health organisations continue to learn and adapt, in part by using HPSR. For HPSR to remain relevant, its practitioners need to re-think how health systems are conceptualised, to keep up with rapid changes in how we diagnose and manage disease and use information, and consider factors affecting people’s health ...

Using Patient Reported Outcomes Measures to Promote Integrated Care

Patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) have been introduced as standardised outcomes, but have not been implemented widely for disease targeted pathways of care, nor for geriatric patients who prefer functional performance and quality of life

Good collaborative practice: reforming capacity building governance of international health research partnerships

In line with the policy objectives of the United Nations sustainable Development Goals, this commentary seeks to examine to which provisions of international health research guidance promote capacity building and equitable partnerships in global health research. This evaluation finds that governance of collaborative research partnerships, and in particular capacity building, in resource-constrained settings is limited but has improved with the implementation guidance of the International Ethical Guidelines for Health-related Research Involving Humans by The Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences (CIOMS) (2016). 

Good collaborative practice: reforming capacity building governance of international health research partnerships

In  line with the policy objetives of the United Nations sustainable Development Goals, this commentary seeks to examine the extent which provisions of international health research guidance promote capacity building and equitable partnerships in global health research. Theri evaluation finds that governance of collaborative research partnership, in resource- constrained settigns is limited but has improved with the implementation guidance of the International Ethical Guidelines for Health- related Research Involving Humans by The Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences (CIOMS 2016)

Instruments Measuring Integrated Care: A Systematic Review of Measurement Properties

Integrated care is an important strategy for increasing health system performance. Despite ots growing significance, detailed evidence on the measurement properties of integrated care instruments remains vague and limited. This systematic review aims to provide evidence on the state of the art in measuring integrated care. 

Integrated care: better and cheaper

Integrated care improves health, increases quality of care and lowers costs. These three goals, this Triple Aim in other words, are achieved in many examples from all over the world: from Alaska to New Zealand, from Western Europe to South Africa. However, disseminating all these good examples is easier said than done, as nationwide implementation means the simultaneous realisation of the following six components of integrated care:

1. Multidisciplinary care pathways and decision trees

2. Patient self-management and shared decision-making by patients and professionals

3. Guaranteeing professional and patient- perceived quality

4. Population-based funding and shared savings

5. An Electronic ...

Integrated care for older people: guidelines on community-level interventions to manage declines in intrinsic capacity

Guidelines on community-level interventions to manage declines in intrinsic capacity.