Previously submitted to: Journal of Medical Internet Research (no longer under consideration since Sep 03, 2018)
Date Submitted: May 4, 2018
Open Peer Review Period: May 9, 2018 - Jul 4, 2018
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
NOTE: This is an unreviewed Preprint
Warning: This is a unreviewed preprint (What is a preprint?). Readers are warned that the document has not been peer-reviewed by expert/patient reviewers or an academic editor, may contain misleading claims, and is likely to undergo changes before final publication, if accepted, or may have been rejected/withdrawn (a note "no longer under consideration" will appear above).
Peer-review me: Readers with interest and expertise are encouraged to sign up as peer-reviewer, if the paper is within an open peer-review period (in this case, a "Peer-Review Me" button to sign up as reviewer is displayed above). All preprints currently open for review are listed here. Outside of the formal open peer-review period we encourage you to tweet about the preprint.
Citation: Please cite this preprint only for review purposes or for grant applications and CVs (if you are the author).
Final version: If our system detects a final peer-reviewed "version of record" (VoR) published in any journal, a link to that VoR will appear below. Readers are then encourage to cite the VoR instead of this preprint.
Settings: If you are the author, you can login and change the preprint display settings, but the preprint URL/DOI is supposed to be stable and citable, so it should not be removed once posted.
Submit: To post your own preprint, simply submit to any JMIR journal, and choose the appropriate settings to expose your submitted version as preprint.
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Increasing Need for an eHealth Impact Framework for Africa
Background:
Efforts by African countries to improve healthcare and citizens’ health within challenging resource limitations put considerable pressure on investment decisions. eHealth is believed to have potential to strengthen health systems and is now seen by some entities as a determinant of health, yet its impact is not well estimated in advance or measured after implementation. This is an obstacle to the effective allocation of healthcare resources and limits national and regional abilities to develop eHealth and realise its potential in health systems transformation.
Objective:
A broad conceptual framework for appraising eHealth impact could help selection of the best course of action by informing individual steps, including: identification of promising initiatives, choosing between eHealth options, motivating for financing, managing implementation, preparing for obsolescence, analysing achievements, and promoting sustainability. Such insight could help strengthen and transform healthcare, provide benchmarks for oversight and Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E), and improve individual and population health. Such frameworks exist, but do not address the needs of African countries.
Methods:
Desktop literature review to explore African countries’ eHealth context and the need for an eHealth economic appraisal framework.
Results:
Unique aspects of Africa’s health context are elucidated, particularly relating to resource constraints and health strengthening priorities. The influence of these aspects on eHealth development, and how to address factors such as affordability, value for money and risk, are highlighted. Key eHealth appraisal terms are clarified.
Conclusions:
The paper presents the role of eHealth impact appraisal in appraising eHealth options for African countries and describes aspects critical for an eHealth impact framework for Africa.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.