Allcock, J.A. orcid.org/0009-0003-5741-1273, Zhuang, M. orcid.org/0000-0002-4546-1033, Li, S. orcid.org/0000-0002-0147-8888 et al. (1 more author) (2024) Landscape of digital technologies used in the National Health Service in England: content analysis. JMIR Formative Research, 8. e51859. ISSN 2561-326X
Abstract
Background: In England, digital technologies are exploited to transform the way health and social care is provided and encompass a wide range of hardware devices and software that are used in all aspects of health care. However, little is known about the extent to which health care providers differ in digital health technology capabilities and how this relates to geographical and regional differences in health care capacities and resources.
Objective: This paper aims to identify the set of digital technologies that have been deployed by the National Health Services clinical commissioning groups (NHS CCGs) in England. In doing this, we respond to calls to shed light on the internal dynamics and variation in the form of digital capability in England in terms of health service regional differences and health diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Methods: We collected 135 annual reports that belong to 106 NHS CCGs in England, comprising more than 18,000 pages in total, released from 2020 to 2021. Using this data set, we identified 2163 pages related to digital technologies and labeled them using content analysis. We follow the construct taxonomy used by digital options theory, a theory from the management information systems field analyzing organizational resource investment choices, in classifying observed technologies according to digital themes—inherent design patterns that we identified and explained. We then used a hierarchical clustering method to extract groups of NHS CCGs that implement similar technology themes.
Results: We found 31 technologies from the reports and grouped them into 9 digital themes. The 9 themes were further assigned to 1 of the 3 constructs of digital options theory, the identification of patients’ requirements (we identified information portals [76/106], digital health engagement [67/106], and digital inclusion support [45/106]), the development of new work patterns (we identified telehealth [87/106], telemedicine [35/106], and care home technologies [40/106]), the realization of improvements in efficiency and public accessibility (we identified online booking [26/106], online triage [104/106], and digital mental health services [74/106]). The 3 clusters of CCGs are identified based on the 8 themes (Hopkins=0.9914, silhouette=0.186), namely (1) digitally disengaged, (2) digitally engaged, and (3) digital torchbearer.
Conclusions: Our findings show prominent digital themes within each construct group, namely information portals, telehealth, and online triage, covering people’s fundamental health information needs. Almost half of CCGs fell into the digitally disengaged group, and all London CCGs (5/106) belonged to this group. We propose that practitioners should offer specialized assistance to regions with limited digital engagement, emphasizing digital health literacy, inclusion support, and ongoing evaluation, rather than concentrating solely on technical advancements.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | ©Jake Alan Allcock, Mengdie Zhuang, Shuyang Li, Xin Zhao. Originally published in JMIR Formative Research (https://formative.jmir.org), 19.04.2024. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIR Formative Research, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on https://formative.jmir.org, as well as this copyright and license information must be included. |
Keywords: | NHS; National Health Service; digital health; digital technology; health equity; healthcare service; regional difference |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Information School (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 09 Aug 2024 15:42 |
Last Modified: | 09 Aug 2024 15:42 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | JMIR Publications Inc. |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.2196/51859 |
Related URLs: | |
Sustainable Development Goals: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:215553 |