 | | Anne Granstrøm Ekeland from NST and the other researchers in the project are looking for the best approaches to study telemedicine. At the end of the year, they will present a set of best practices for both researchers and the EU. Photo: Jan Fredrik Frantzen, NST. |
The Norwegian Centre for Integrated Care and Telemedicine (NST) and Danish MedCom will now conduct a one-year study for the EU, to explore the limitations and opportunities that the various scientific approaches, or methodologies, represent for research on telemedicine in Europe.
A variety of approaches are used today, and in medical research evidence-based studies and randomized controlled trials are the gold standard. But one of the challenges of telemedicine is that researchers and evaluators often become participants in development processes.
This demands new approaches that entail greater involvement, and it is necessary to explore the answers that the different scientific directions have yielded.
Proving the unprovable?
During the next year, Anne Granstrøm Ekeland from the NST and the other researchers in the project group will analyse the strengths and weaknesses of the approaches used today. They will review the results of thousands of scientific articles as well as documents from public-sector organizations.
The question is whether science tries to prove the unprovable. Telemedicine focuses on widely diverging subjects such as technology, coordination, and what you can achieve through your own efforts. And it is becoming increasingly common to adapt services to the individual patient.
Has the discipline become so multi-faceted, so difficult to keep track of, and so prone to rapid changes that new methodologies are needed to enable us to understand what telemedicine is and to confirm its effects?
"The effects are related to competence, motivation, commitment, and subjective perceptions from the perspective of different interest groups. One-sided approaches may therefore risk concealing both positive and negative effects, because they do not pay enough attention to all the factors involved. It looks as though we need to use several different approaches," explains Ekeland.
Gathering knowledge from multiple angles
During the next year, the project partners will collect points of view from a broad-based group consisting of politicians, research communities, industry, funding sources, and users of telemedicine.
The aim is that the studies will result in recommended guidelines for the EU. For research communities in telemedicine, the studies will also offer insight into how various scientific approaches can address different needs for knowledge – and which approaches need further development in order to yield good answers to telemedicine questions.
The project is funded through the EU’s Information Society and will be completed in February 2010. The project is headed by Danish MedCom – the Danish Healthcare Data Network – and the NST. The University of Stirling, the Norwegian Knowledge Centre for Health Services and the London School of Economics are also taking part in the project.
Contact person at the NST
Anne Granstrøm Ekeland, telephone +47 952 66 791 and email Anne.Granstrom.Ekeland@telemed.no
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