Moving Research to Practice
PHSA is committed to improvements in practice through knowledge. One source of knowledge is Research – and assisting health professionals in understanding Research-based knowledge is the focus of the Moving Research to Practice program.
The core of the Moving Research to Practice program is an online training system that takes a current or important research topic that impacts health service and explains it in non-technical language. Training modules:
- provide the ability to move at your own pace
- let you return at your leisure
- include real-world examples
- require no registration or specialized training
- can be completed in less than 30 minutes
The modules use both sound and visuals to explain how research impacts day-to-day practice. The audio portion of the presentation isn’t just a reading of the slides, but is aimed at providing a more expressive presentation of the material. If you are in a situation where you can’t listen to the audio, just look for the transcript under the notes tab.
This project was funded by a generous grant from the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research to enhance provincial research capacity. Additionally, the technology to deliver to content was generously donated by the Health Organization Management program in the Rawls College of Business at Texas Tech University.
This project is under the joint direction of Dr. Timothy R. Huerta who develops content on a quarterly basis for health service delivery managers and personnel and Dr. Stuart MacLeod, Executive Director of the Child and Family Research Institute and Assistant Dean of Research at UBC’s Faculty of Medicine, who is responsible for leading PHSA agencies in developing and capitalizing on research and academic partnerships.
Ideas for future modules should be sent to the Health Services Research Unit care of Dr. Huerta, Research Scientist, PHSA Research and Networks at tim.huerta@ttu.edu
Current Modules
Economics & Decision Theory
Introduction to Economic Evaluation
Link: http://chierdata.ba.ttu.edu/Reports/EconEvalPub/EconEval1/index.htm
This module is targeted at those interested in learning a little bit about economic evaluation and its use in making decisions in the health care system. It covers four evaluation methods, including cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit analysis. No prior knowledge of economics is required.
Critical Appraisal and Economic Evaluation
Link: http://chierdata.ba.ttu.edu/Reports/EconEvalPub/EconEval2/index.htm
This expands on the first module to assist individuals assess published economic evaluations. This module provides four questions that can be used to critically evaluate an economic evaluation. No prior knowledge of economics is required, however participants should review the “Introduction to Economic Evaluation” module.
Budget Impact Analysis (BIA)
Link: http://chierdata.ba.ttu.edu/Reports/EconEvalPub/EconEval3/index.htm
This module provides an introduction to Budget Impact Analysis (BIA) – a common tool used to inform decision-making in health contexts. BIAs have been called “scenario testing” and “what-if” calculations, and in the end, they are about estimating the impact on the bottom line. If you’ve ever heard of a “budget analyst”, BIA is most often what they spend their time doing. This training module will present the fundamentals of BIA. No prior knowledge of economics is required.
Patient Reported Outcomes (PROs) and Health Related Quality of Life (HRQoL)
Link: http://chierdata.ba.ttu.edu/Reports/EconEvalPub/EconEval4/SCORM.htm
In this presentation we will be focusing on Patient Reported Outcomes (PROs) and Health Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) measures as types of health data you can obtain from patient populations. We start by defining the concept of Patient Reported Outcomes and Health Related Quality of Life measures. We then discuss how these measures are used by researchers and administrators to draw conclusions about quality and effectiveness in healthcare. We will also discuss the growing importance of Patient Reported Outcomes and Health Related Quality of Life measures in research and their place in current standards of evaluation of new treatments.
Decision Making
Links: http://chierdata.ba.ttu.edu/Reports/ecosc-high/EcoSC-L1/EcoSC-L1.html
http://chierdata.ba.ttu.edu/Reports/ecosc-high/EcoSC-L2/EcoSC-L2.html
http://chierdata.ba.ttu.edu/Reports/ecosc-high/EcoSC-L3/EcoSC-L3.html
http://chierdata.ba.ttu.edu/Reports/ecosc-high/EcoSC-L4/EcoSC-L4.html
This presentation is an introductory walk through of decision making, using an economic framework. Economics is the science of human decision making and the quantization of value relative to those decisions. In order to cover the subject, we will be using four components of traditional economic theory: game theory, decision theory, general equilibrium theory, and mechanism design theory. In addition we will describe the different steps in decision making. This session is for individuals wanting a more theoretic understanding of economics.
Measurements & Evaluations
Whole System Measures
Link: http://chierdata.ba.ttu.edu/Reports/WholeSystems/index.htm
This module provides an introduction to Whole System Measures, a benchmarking tool used to inform decision-making in health contexts. The presentation will focus on a report published by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) as a part of their Innovation Series. IHI is an internationally respected nonprofit organization with a vision of bringing together thousands of healthcare providers throughout the world to address the need for improving the delivery of care. With the Whole System Measures framework, IHI and their collaborators have defined a system of metrics that measure the overall quality of a medically-based healthcare delivery system.
Knowledge Translation
Health Technology Assessment (HTA)
Link: http://chierdata.ba.ttu.edu/Reports/HTA/index.htm
This presentation focuses on identifying the outcome measures that a hospital or hospital system could put into place to determine the impact of the adoption of new technology. The ability to measure the impact of technology adoption in practice, as opposed to structured conditions in a Randomized Control Trial, is a necessary step in post-research evaluation.
This case provides an example of how a hospital or hospital system could measure the impact of the adoption of new technology on the bottom line. The Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH) conducted an economic evaluation on the costs and benefits of different systems for the early detection and treatment of precancerous and cancerous cells. While Conventional Cytology (CC) is considered the gold standard for detection, another model, called Liquid-based Cytology provides similar, but not identical, sensitivity for the detection of precancerous cell, but has the additional benefit of detection of the Human Papillomaviruses (HPV) without an additional test.