Integrated Care’s New Protagonist: The Expanding Role of Digital Health

Digital health technologies hold significant promise to advance both functional and normative health and social care integration. The COVID-19 pandemic has created a window of opportunity to rapidly advance the adoption of digital solutions which can improve activities that support integration at clinical, professional, organizational and system levels. Global examples demonstrate how the pandemic has also created opportunities to use technology to address core values of integrated care like person-centredness and coordination. However, rapid and reactive changes could lead to increased fragmentation and exacerbate health inequity. This perspective paper outlines some of the opportunities and threats to advancing integrated care ...

Person-centred care in TB

The WHO End TB Strategy includes integrated patient-centred care and prevention within one of its three pillars and has global targets aimed at ending the TB epidemic by the year 2030. Here, we describe the tensions and challenges that may undermine the approach and explore opportunities to align person-centred care with other health system goals. 

Evaluation is Key: Providing Appropriate Evaluation Measures for Participatory and User-Centred Design Processes of Healthcare IT

The increasing availability of healthcare IT has the potential to improve the integration of health services. Existing projects developing healthcare IT mostly disregard the potential and importance of incorporating user feedback and proper evaluation measures to gain user feedback throughout the development process.

This article aims to provide methodological guidance for evaluation in a stepwise user-centred design process.

Exploring the Quality Paradigms in Integrated Care: The Need for Emergence and Reflection

There are four quality paradigms, of which the Empirical and Reference paradigm fit best in stable circumstances, and the Reflective and Emergence paradigms, which fit best in unstable circumstances.

This study aims to explore the use of the four quality paradigms in integrated care, and to shed light on the different paradigmatic commitments and different perspectives on quality.

Co-Design for People-Centred Care Digital Solutions: A Literature Review

The implementation of people-centred care requires strategies that respond to local conditions and contexts, with the participation of local stakeholders in collaborative approaches such as co-design. Within this framework, the authors performed a literature review to identify the most implemented practices in health and social care services for co-designing digital solutions.

Nothing for us, without us: opportunities for meaningful engagement of people living with NCDs

People living with NCDs (PLWNCDs) are experts in their own right and if meaningfully engaged can be key partners and drivers in the co-creation, implementation and evaluation of NCD policies, programs, and services. 

This report is a result of the WHO Informal Consultation on PLWNCDs and outlines the participatory methods, main themes discussed and key next steps to further support meaningful engagement.

Nursing Care Coordination for Patients with Complex Needs in Primary Healthcare: A Scoping Review

Millions of people worldwide have complex health and social care needs. Care coordination for these patients is a core dimension of integrated care and a key responsibility for primary healthcare. Registered nurses play a substantial role in care coordination.

This review draws on previous theoretical work and provides a synthesis of care coordination interventions as operationalized by nurses for complex patient populations in primary healthcare.

Co-Creating Descriptors and a Definition for Person-Centred Coordinated Health Care: An Action Research Study

The aim of this study was to co-create a definition and generic descriptors for person-centred coordinated care for Ireland generated from service users’ narratives.

An overarching action research approach was used to engage and empower people to tangibly impact health policy and practice. Through focus groups and a qualitative survey, primary data were collected from a national sample of health services users, caregivers and health care service users’ representative groups. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. Three major themes were co-produced as essential care elements. These were: ‘My experience of healthcare’, ‘Care that I am confident in’ and ...

Physician Assistants and Nurse Practitioners in Primary Care Plus: A Systematic Review

Shifting specialist care from the hospital to primary care/community care (also called primary care plus) is proposed as one option to reduce the increasing healthcare costs, improve quality of care and accessibility.

The aim of this systematic review was to get insight in primary care plus provided by physician assistants or nurse practitioners.

JICA Special Issue: Integrated Palliative and End of Life Care for People with Advanced Dementia or Frailty

This special issue now seems uncannily prescient in view of the devastating impact of COVID-19 on people with advanced dementia or severe frailty, particularly in care homes.

The pandemic has heightened awareness of the possibility of a sudden and rapid transition from relative health to a palliative or end of life stage. This has opened up conversations about the potential burden from intensive treatments that are likely to be futile and the benefits of advance care planning.

The collection of papers in this special issue will be of interest to readers involved in planning, commissioning or delivering palliative and end ...