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Beyond pilotitis: taking digital health interventions to the national level in China and Uganda

Overview of attention for article published in Globalization and Health, July 2017
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About this Attention Score

  • In the top 25% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (90th percentile)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (82nd percentile)

Mentioned by

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4 policy sources
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15 X users
facebook
1 Facebook page

Citations

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128 Dimensions

Readers on

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338 Mendeley
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Title
Beyond pilotitis: taking digital health interventions to the national level in China and Uganda
Published in
Globalization and Health, July 2017
DOI 10.1186/s12992-017-0275-z
Pubmed ID
Authors

Fei Huang, Sean Blaschke, Henry Lucas

Abstract

Innovation theory has focused on the adoption of new products or services by individuals and their market-driven diffusion to the population at large. However, major health sector innovations typically emerge from negotiations between diverse stakeholders who compete to impose or at least prioritise their preferred version of that innovation. Thus, while many digital health interventions have succeeded in terms of adoption by a substantial number of providers and patients, they have generally failed to gain the level of acceptance required for their integration into national health systems that would promote sustainability and population-wide application. The area of innovation considered here relates to a growing number of success stories that have created considerable enthusiasm among donors, international agencies, and governments for the potential role of ICTs in transforming weak national health information systems in middle and low income countries. This article uses a case study approach to consider the assumptions, institutional as well as technical, underlying this enthusiasm and explores possible ways in which outcomes might be improved. Literature review and case study analysis. The two systems considered have had considerable success in terms of gaining and maintaining government support and addressing the concerns of providers without compromising their core elements. In Uganda, the system has flourished in spite of severe resource constraints, using a participatory approach that has encouraged a high level of community engagement. In China, concern with past failures generated the political will to build a high quality surveillance system, using the latest technology and drawing on a highly skilled human resource base. Both example stress the importance of recognising the political, social and historical context within which information systems have to function. Implementers need to focus as much on the perceptions, attitudes and needs of stakeholders as on the technology. Implementers should distinguish between factors which may influence engagement at an institutional level and those aimed at supporting and supervising individuals within those institutions. Finally, we would suggest that designing interoperability into systems at the outset, rather than assuming that this can be achieved at some point in the future, may prove far easier in the longer term.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 15 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 338 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 338 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Master 62 18%
Researcher 33 10%
Student > Ph. D. Student 33 10%
Student > Bachelor 22 7%
Other 16 5%
Other 50 15%
Unknown 122 36%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Medicine and Dentistry 39 12%
Nursing and Health Professions 34 10%
Computer Science 25 7%
Social Sciences 23 7%
Business, Management and Accounting 18 5%
Other 63 19%
Unknown 136 40%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 23. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 07 February 2024.
All research outputs
#1,637,654
of 25,376,646 outputs
Outputs from Globalization and Health
#257
of 1,223 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#31,243
of 322,645 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Globalization and Health
#8
of 39 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,376,646 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 93rd percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,223 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 21.9. This one has done well, scoring higher than 79% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 322,645 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 90% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 39 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 82% of its contemporaries.