In the first in a series on evaluating eHealth in the open access journal PLoS Medicine, Aziz Sheikh and Lorraine Catwell from The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland outline the background to the series and discuss the importance of evaluating the widespread investments in and adoption of information communication technology in health care.
Funding: This work was supported by a grant from the NHS Connecting for Health Evaluation Programme (NHS CFHEP 001; see: http://www.pcpoh.bham.ac.uk/publichealth/cfhep/). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing Interests: AS is and has been involved in a number of evaluations of IT in health care funded by Asthma UK, British Lung Foundation, Intel, CSO, and the NHS Connecting for Health Evaluation Programme. He is principal investigator on projects evaluating the international literature on the impact of eHealth on the quality and safety of health care, a benefits assessment of the impact of increased structuring and coding of patient data, and the evaluation of the national implementation of electronic health records into hospitals in England.
Citation: Catwell L, Sheikh A (2009) Evaluating eHealth Interventions: The Need for Continuous Systemic Evaluation. PLoS Med 6(8): e1000126. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000126
IN YOUR COVERAGE PLEASE USE THIS URL TO PROVIDE ACCESS TO THE FREELY AVAILABLE PAPER: http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=1000126
PRESS-ONLY PREVIEW OF THE ARTICLE: http://www.plos.org/press/plme-06-08-sheikh.pdf
CONTACT:
Aziz Sheikh
Edinburgh University
Centre for Population Health Sciences
General Practice Section
20 West Richmond St
Edinburgh, EH8 9DX
United Kingdom
44 131 651 4151
aziz.sheikh@ed.ac.uk
Facing up to unpalatable evidence for the sake of our patients
Paul Mullen (of Monash University, Melbourne) discusses Seena Fazel and colleagues' paper on the association between violent behavior and having been diagnosed with a schizophrenic disorder, and its implications for care of these individuals.
The paper by Fazel and colleagues was published last week and is freely available via the following link: http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1000120
Funding: No specific funding was received for this paper.
Competing Interests: The author has declared that no competing interests exist.
Citation: Mullen PE (2009) Facing Up to Unpalatable Evidence for the Sake of Our Patients. PLoS Med 6(8):e1000112. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000112
IN YOUR COVERAGE PLEASE USE THIS URL TO PROVIDE ACCESS TO THE FREELY AVAILABLE PAPER: http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=1000112
PRESS-ONLY PREVIEW OF THE ARTICLE: http://www.plos.org/press/plme-06-08-mullen.pdf
CONTACT:
Paul Mullen
Monash University
Forensic Psychiatry, Victorian Institute of Forensic Mental Health
Melbourne
Australia
+61 3 9495 9136
paul.mullen@forensicare.vic.gov.au
* * * * * * EMBARGO: Monday 17th August, 2009 * * * * * * 5PM PDT/ 8PM ET
Everything published by PLoS Medicine is Open Access: freely available for anyone to read, download, redistribute and otherwise use, as long as the authorship is properly attributed.
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