Specific Challenge:
People-centred care is one of the main goals of health systems[1]. It relates to a stronger orientation towards the needs of people and their involvement in the treatment process and decision-making. This is expected to result in a better care as experienced by people, in less inequality, better health promotion, better disease prevention, and treatments better targeted to people’s needs. Health system transition to people-centred care requires empowering citizens[2] and integration of services[3].
The growing digital transformation of health and care offers great opportunity to achieve this transition. Innovative solutions[4] involving digital tools have the potential to improve people-centred care through self-management, goal orientation and shared decision-making. However, technical innovation is unlikely to achieve the anticipated improvements/impact if not accompanied by supportive organisational and policy innovations. Given the complexity and differences between health systems, cross-national comparative health services and systems research as well as implementation research are needed to better understand the contextual factors that impact the successful introduction, use and sustainability of innovative solutions. This will in turn facilitate their scalability[5] and their transferability to other settings.
Scope:Proposals should study the scaling-up or transferability of an innovative solution involving digital tools, i.e. the conditions under which it can be implemented in other health systems and whether it can have the same intended effect.
To address this specific challenge, the proposals should:
Proposals should be multidisciplinary, bringing together expertise in health services and systems research, human and social sciences and implementation research[6]. The main focus should be on improving people-centeredness in Europe but solutions can originate from non-European countries. Gender aspects should be taken into account. Careful consideration should be given to vulnerable groups. Relevant stakeholders including end-users of research and patients’ organisations should be identified and involved throughout the project lifetime. Innovative approaches in gathering patients input should be considered.
The proposals should complement or build on existing initiatives, including (but not limited to) results of EU-funded projects[7].
Selected proposals should provide evidence to support the third pillar of the Communication from the Commission on enabling the digital transformation of health and care in the Digital Single Market, ''Digital tools for citizens empowerment and person-centred care[8]".
The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU Horizon 2020 research programme of between EUR 3 and 4 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.
Expected Impact:[1]World Health Organization 2016. What are integrated people-centred health services? https://www.who.int/servicedeliverysafety/areas/people-centred-care/ipchs-what/en/
[2]Empowering citizens refers among others to enhancing their self management, raising health literacy, involving people through co-production of care and supporting informal carers.
[3]The concepts of integrated services and people-centred care are complementary to each other. Person-centredness not only requires involving people to explore their needs and come to shared decisions about treatment, but also a system-wide policy and organisation of services. Integrated care principles allow care for patients to be better coordinated, and jointly planned by the health and social care professionals across relevant preventive and curative services.
[4]The term “innovative solutions” refers to any service or policy innovations. It encompasses technological innovations, organisational innovations and public health policies. Organisational innovation should be understand in a broad sense including governance, payment, information systems, roles and skills in attaining efficient health care organisations when introducing new technologies.
[5]Scalability is used in the sense of the uptake in larger numbers of the same innovation in comparable organisations and/or in the same sector.
[6]Implementation research refers to the scientific study of methods to promote the uptake of research findings into routine healthcare in clinical, organizational or policy contexts
[7]e.g. TO-REACH, ImpleMentAll, TICD, PROJECT INTEGRATE, SELFIE, SMART2D
[8]https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/communication-enabling-digital-transformation-health-and-care-digital-single-market-empowering