Summary
Objectives: eHealth and innovation are often regarded as synonyms – not least because eHealth
technologies and applications are new to their users. This position paper challenges
this view and aims at exploring the nature of eHealth innovation against the background
of common definitions of innovation and facts from the biomedical and health informatics
literature. A good understanding of what constitutes innovative eHealth developments
allows the degree of innovation to be measured and interpreted.
Methods: To this end, relevant biomedical and health informatics literature was searched mainly
in Medline and ACM digital library. This paper presents seven facts about implementing
and applying new eHealth developments hereby drawing on the experience published in
the literature.
Results: The facts are: 1. eHealth innovation is relative. 2. Advanced clinical practice is
the yardstick. 3. Only used and usable eHealth technology can give birth to eHealth
innovatio. 4. One new single eHealth function does not make a complex eHealth innovation.
5. eHealth innovation is more evolution than revolution. 6. eHealth innovation is
often triggered behind the scenes; and 7. There is no eHealth innovation without sociocultural
change.
Conclusions: The main conclusion of the seven facts is that eHealth innovations have many ingredients:
newness, availability, advanced clinical practice with proven outcomes, use and usability,
the supporting environment, other context factors and the stakeholder perspectives.
Measuring eHealth innovation is thus a complex matter. To this end we propose the
development of a composite score that expresses comprehensively the nature of eHealth
innovation and that breaks down its complexity into the three dimensions: i) eHealth
adoption, ii) partnership with advanced clinical practice, and iii) use and usability
of eHealth. In order to better understand the momentum and mechanisms behind eHealth
innovation the fourth dimension, iv) eHealth supporting services and means, needs
to be studied. Conceptualising appropriate measurement instruments also requires eHealth
innovation to be distinguished from eHealth sophistication, performance and quality,
although innovation is intertwined with these concepts. The demanding effort for defining
eHealth innovation and measuring it properly seem worthwhile and promise advances
in creating better systems. This paper thus intends to stimulate the necessary discussion.
Keywords
eHealth - innovation - IT-adoption - measurement - electronic health record system
