The Origin and Impact of Ideals in eHealth Research: Experiences From the U-CARE Research Environment

BACKGROUND The prevalence of information technology (IT) in society is a foundation for new modes of interaction between patients and health specialists. IT plays an important role in the renewal of care. Several countries have incorporated eHealth plans into their national health strategies. Part of the eHealth evolution concerns Internet psychological treatment and psychosocial care. These interventions are complex to design and evaluate due to legal, ethical, organizational, technical, and methodological challenges. OBJECTIVE The objective of our study was to seek to make explicit contributions to the understanding of ideals in eHealth research, and illuminate their implications for establishing an effective research environment. Our analysis draws from three years of experience in establishing an eHealth research environment, and the literature. METHODS We worked inductively to characterize challenging research ideals, and their origins, in our environment. Thereafter, we made a selective search of the literature to scrutinize and illuminate each ideal and it's implications. RESULTS In this work, we propose a structured approach to address ideals in eHealth research. The scrutinized ideals are accountability, innovation, rigor, relevance, and sustainability. The approach supports researchers to systematically understand the ideals, their origin, and to manage their implications within an eHealth research environment. CONCLUSIONS The complexity of eHealth research causes a need for sustainable, multi-disciplinary research environments. There is a need for a structured approach to organize eHealth research. The proposed approach helps to systematically scrutinize ideals, thus promoting high quality research.