Evaluation of the Citrien eHealth Programme for Nationwide Upscaling of Telemonitoring: A Study Protocol (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Sustainable implementation of telemonitoring in healthcare is challenging. Especially so, if one aims to scale-up telemonitoring initiatives nationwide. OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study protocol is to describe the methodology and evaluation of a collaborative eHealth program, attempting to do precisely so. The National collaborative eHealth program of the Netherlands is supporting implementation of telemonitoring in three clinical domains in all Dutch University Medical Centers (umc’s). The chosen themes are: 1) telemonitoring solutions in the domain of cardiology, 2) telemonitoring solutions providing care-at-a distance in obstetrics and 3) telemonitoring solutions monitoring vital functions in hospital wards. METHODS A before-and-after study will be conducted to assess the degree of successful implementation. Primary outcome of study is the degree of normalization in which health care providers in umc’s consider telemonitoring to be a part of their routine practice. The secondary outcome is the uptake of telemonitoring in the Dutch umc’s. The framework for Non-adoption, Abandonment, Scale-up, Spread and Sustainability (NASSS) will be used to safeguard for structured analysis. Normalization of telemonitoring will be measured using the Normalization MeAsurement Development tool (NoMAD). RESULTS Data will be collected between May 2020 and December 2022. Results will be retrieved in June 2023. CONCLUSIONS This study expects to yield unique evidence and insights about the use of telemonitoring in Dutch umc’s and hence provide better understanding on how to scale-up telemonitoring across the healthcare sector. The study protocol could serve as inspiration for those planning to execute a programmatic intervention supporting a large-scale scale-up of eHealth.