Project start date: November 2022
Project status: completed October 2023
Project sponsor: Health Quality Council of Alberta

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Alberta lacks a tradition of systematically evaluating provincial digital health technologies to assure that they are providing safe, quality health service. This shortfall reflects a general trend in Canada where health information technology evaluation has lagged, potentially limiting insights that could inform optimized use of technologies in support of quality care. The Canadian Network for Digital Health Evaluation (CNDHE) was founded in 2022 to fill this acknowledged gap in the evaluation of the “impact of digital health interventions on access, quality, and equity of care, and to promote a common strategy for digital health evaluation across Canada”.  This reflects that until recently there has been a paucity of research evaluating the impact of health data interoperability on the health and wellbeing of Canadians.

 

The purpose of this project is to propose means to advance digital health - and specifically virtual care service - evaluation in Alberta in order to promote informed digital health technology design and use. The focus of this project is not strictly on technology evaluation, but also on the evaluation of all aspects of digital health service, including the impact of governance, public policy and regulation. A comprehensive and evidential evaluation framework can increase our understanding about what gaps are present and how to plan and implement optimized virtual care services.