Digital Health Evaluation Step-by-Step Guides and Method Library

Public Health England has produced resources for digital health innovators and SMEs to help with the complex and necessary task of carrying out effective evaluations. The resources include step-by-step guides and a library of publications intended for anyone developing or operating a digital health product. These could be digital services, campaigns through apps or websites or other digital interventions.

Each of the digital innovations selected to be on the DigitalHealth.London Accelerator programme have been selected to address the challenges of the NHS. Our current cohort are all digital innovations that can help the NHS achieve the aims of the Long Term Plan. Having this depth of resources for innovators like the ones on our Accelerator programme, could have a major impact on the scale and spread of digital technologies.

Anna King, Commercial Director at the Health Innovation Network, said:

“These resources are a fantastic move in supporting the growth of digital health innovations. Standardising the vital processes involved in evaluating digital health technologies and products will benefit not only the companies developing solutions but also the NHS, it’s staff and patients.

“We work closely with digital health innovators every day and the need to effectively evaluate products and services in order to demonstrate their success and potential, is vastly becoming the sectors’ number one priority for growth.”

Paul Wallace, Clinical Director for Digital at the Health Innovation Network, said:

“The DigitalHealth.London Accelerator and the GENERATOR programme at the Health Innovation Network are actively engaged in the development of pathways and networks to assist the effective and timely generation of evidence by digital health SMEs. Any resources that help advance a greater understanding of the value of evaluations in digital health is a positive step forward and I warmly welcome the focus Public Health England is giving to this important and growing area.”

For more information and to access the resources visit here.

Overview of resources available:

Step-by-step guides

• Get started: evaluating digital health products
• Define how your product works: evaluating digital health products
• Design your evaluation: evaluating digital health products
• Choose evaluation methods: evaluating digital health products
• Carry out your evaluation: evaluating digital health products
• Analyse your data: evaluating digital health products
• Use your results: evaluating digital health products

Methods library

• Analysis of routinely collected data: descriptive studies
• User feedback study: descriptive studies
• Before-and-after study: comparative studies
• Randomised controlled trial: comparative studies
• A/B testing: comparative studies
• Focus group study: qualitative studies
• Interview study: qualitative studies
• Usability testing: qualitative studies

More information about our work and opportunities in digital health evaluation visit digitalhealth.london/evidence-and-research/