Implementing – Meso Level
IMPLEMENTING
Meso Overview
The meso level refers to activities at the regional or subregional level as well as among local health authorities and primary care networks. This phase relates to full scale implementation of the digital health solution in real-world settings based on what has been planned at the Macro level. Implementation should take a staggered approach to allow for incremental learning, feedback cycles and modification of the technology or implementation strategy as needed. This also allows for adjusting personnel and clinical or administrative routines, if needed. A clear plan for data collection, monitoring and tracking of key metrics of interest should have been established in the planning phase. Evaluating and reflecting in the implementing phase broadly seeks to answer these questions:
- What does implementation rollout look like in real-world settings?
- What (if any) changes (intended and un-intended) have occurred as a result of implementation?
- What have we learnt so far and how can we revise policy, practice, or implementation in response to these lessons?
- What are the short (6months-2years), medium (2-4years) or long-term (>4years) outcomes of the digital health solution?
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Equity
DEFINITION
Health equity implies that everyone has a fair opportunity to attain long and healthy lives and that no one is disadvantaged from achieving this potential irrespective of their social, economic, geographic, demographic, racial or ethnic grouping.
Digital Health Equity is achieved when all people have equal opportunity to access, use and benefit from digital health to attain long and healthy lives.
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Sustainability
DEFINITION
This is the process by which the digital health solution and the practices and policies that support it become institutionalized or integrated within the structures and systems for health care delivery.
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Contextual Factors
DEFINITION
This encompasses the wider institutional, sociocultural and economic environment of digital health implementation at the meso, meso, and micro levels that can act to enable or constrain implementation.
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Acceptability
DEFINITION
Acceptability is “a multi-faceted construct that reflects the extent to which people delivering or receiving healthcare using a digital health solution consider it to be appropriate based on anticipated or experienced cognitive and emotional responses to the intervention”.
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Appropriateness
DEFINITION
This is related to the fit, relevance, and compatibility of the digital health solution for a given setting, provider or patient, to address a specific health condition. Digital health solutions should be clinically relevant and tailored to align with the comfort, needs and preferences of target end user and beneficiaries.
It includes ensuring an optimum fit between the solution, policy priorities for health and health system resources to drive population-level outcomes.
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Efficiency
DEFINITION
Efficiency refers to optimal use of available resources (financial & human) to achieve set goals of a digital health solution.
It can also refer to how well a digital health solution or tool is designed. Poor user interface design can reduce efficiencies increasing the likelihood of data or inputting errors. E.g. too many menus, alerts, high proficiency required to use.
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Effectiveness
DEFINITION
Effectiveness is the performance of a digital health solution in the real world, including in routine clinical practice, home or community care, and in the context of continuity of care with individuals or local dispersed teams and referral services.
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Fidelity
DEFINITION
This is the degree to which a digital health solution is implemented as prescribed during the planning stage and delivered as intended. It also includes adaptations made to the technology and changes to the implementation strategy.