The CeHRes Roadmap serves as a guideline for eHealth development, implementation and evaluation. Existing evidence-based activities, models, frameworks and methods derived from persuasive design, participatory development, human centred design and business modelling serve as the theoretical background of the Roadmap. All of this is translated into five intertwined phases and connecting cycles. These phases are the contextual inquiry, value specification, design, operationalization and summative evaluation. The connecting cycles represent the formative evaluation cycles, which ensure that activities during a phase are related to the stakeholder perspective, the context, and outcomes of previous phases. The CeHRes Roadmap assists the development team in planning, coordinating and executing the development process of eHealth technologies [1]. This can refer to ‘new’ technologies that are developed from scratch, but also to the improvement of existing technologies, or even the critical analysis of an already conducted development process.
- Contextual Inquiry: In this phase, the design team must get an understanding of prospective users and their context, and analyze the strong and weak points of the current provision of care.
- Value Specification: Then, one must determine which values the different stakeholders deem important. These values and prospective users’ needs and wishes need to be translated into user requirements.
- Design: Based on the requirements, (a prototypical version of) the technology can be developed. The roadmap advocates the application of cooperative design in which the design team creates the technology with prospective users and stakeholders together.
- Operationalization: Now, the technology is launched, marketing plans are set into motion, and organizational working procedures are put into practice.
- Summative Evaluation: Finally, the eHealth technology is evaluated: How is it being used and what is its effect on patients and healthcare?
Furthermore, the products created in each phase should be the subject of Formative Evaluation, aimed at gathering input for improving the product.
The CeHRes roadmap is created for developers (e.g., technicians, designers, healthcare professionals), researchers, policy-makers, and for educational purposes (e.g., students, healthcare providers).
References
[1] Van Gemert-Pijnen, J. E., Nijland, N., van Limburg, M., Ossebaard, H. C., Kelders, S. M., Eysenbach, G., & Seydel, E. R. (2011). A holistic framework to improve the uptake and impact of eHealth technologies. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 13(4): e111.