£300k offered for research into NHS IT attitudes

The NHS Service Delivery and Organisation (SDO) R&D programme have put out a call for proposals, offering £300,000 for research into topics including attitudes of healthcare professionals towards e-health and how uptake of technology can be increased.

Sums of £300,000 are also available for research into how the internet can be used as a health information tool, and how e-health can be used into disease management.

Questions that the NHS SDO are looking to answer include whether "the factors that help and hinder the uptake of computer-based systems similar across the secondary and primary care sectors, and in social care" and what are "the roots of resistance to the use of new e-health systems, and how can they be overcome?"

It cites a number of older studies undertaken in the context of primary care; for example, in 1999, only a few Scottish GPs were using e-mail to communicate with patients due to perceived lack of privacy and also additional workload. The SDO wants "specific attention… [to be] placed on the attitudes of professionals to the use of new information systems, particularly those being developed between organisational and professional boundaries (for example, Choose and Book)".

According to the brief, interim findings from the study that is eventually commissioned will be used to inform the National Programme for IT. "The value of e-health in the coming years needs to be placed in the context of the aims of the NPfIT," says the brief adds.

As well as a review of clinician attitudes, the other studies being sought by the SDO include what the "likely impact on outcomes in the primary care or secondary care sector" is be from health information on the internet and how patients’ use of the internet can be integrated into NPfIT, and whether disease management software is cost-effective for PCTs and acute hospital Trusts.

The deadline given by the NHS SDO for a submission of research proposals is 20th April, 2005. The SDO is scheduling the research to begin in December 2005 and has mandated that it should take no longer than three years to complete.

For more information and for a copy of the briefs and an application form, visit the NHS SDO R&D programme website.