Development and implementation of an evaluation framework for the east of England digital first Primary Care programme
Background
In the East of England, the regional Digital First Primary Care team have responsibility to allocate funds to the Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) following submission of project proposals. Digital interventions are diverse, and many digital initiatives are in their infancy. This means evaluation and knowledge exchange are critical if we are to ensure that effective funding decisions are made and that digital initiatives that have a beneficial impact on population health are implemented. Understanding the impacts of digital initiatives requires appropriate evaluation approaches and the team recognised that they required external support and capacity to undertake this work.
Project Aims
- To develop a generic framework to facilitate systematic evaluation and reporting by systems funded by the Digital First Primary Care programme.
- To ensure that the framework and evaluation processes would allow learning to be captured in a form that enables other systems to decide whether or not to implement a similar approach.
- To appraise the implementation of the framework, and apply any insights gained to make recommendations to improve the evaluation framework, support and/or processes.
Activity
This work was undertaken in two phases. The first phase was the development and launch of the evaluation framework and guidance. The second phase was the appraisal of the implementation of the framework to understand its acceptance and usability by the systems and to help identify any changes needed to the framework or evaluation processes, or any needs for further support and training.