Two new papers just published by IHI researchers

In the first paper, Henry Potts of the UCL Institute of Health Informatics and Katherine Benjamin, a consultant in Canada and formerly in the NHS.UK digital team, discuss the lessons of government digital transformations schemes for healthcare, using NHS.UK, a future version of NHS Choices, as a case study.

Many governments around the world – including the UK, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – have adopted product lifestyle methods from industry. A common starting point for many of these programmes has been the UK’s Government Digital Service (GDS). But applying these agile methods in healthcare brings challenges, including the high reliability setting of health and the multiplicity of stakeholders. Small teams of digital experts, when supported by a digitally progressive leadership team and a tightly defined scope, can produce results, but scaling up to widespread adoption remains problematic.

The paper, “Digital transformation in government: Lessons for digital health?” is published in the journal Digital Health and is available here: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2055207618759168

In the second paper, 'Estimating the Hospital Burden of Norovirus-Associated Gastroenteritis in England and its Opportunity Costs for Non-Admitted Patients', Sandmann et al. argue that, being norovirus the second-largest contributor in England of the gastrointestinal hospital burden, with the projected impact being greater than previously estimated, improved capture of relevant opportunity costs seems imperative for diseases like norovirus.

Sandmann FG, Shallcross L, Adams N, Allen DJ, Coen PG, Jeanes A, Kozlakidis Z, Larkin L, Wurie F, Robotham JV, Jit M, Deeny SR. Estimating the hospital burden of norovirus-associated gastroenteritis in England and its opportunity costs for non-admitted patients. Clinical Infectious Diseases 2018, ciy167, doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciy167. Published: 26 February 2018