Experts launch new checklist to improve quality and reporting of digital health implementations

A group of global experts have developed a checklist to improve the reporting of digital health implementations, as introduced in a new study published on May 10, 2023, in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.

The new checklist called "iCHECK-DH" (pronounced "I checked") stands for "Guidelines and Checklist for the Reporting on Digital Health Implementations." This 20-item checklist aims to standardize the quality of reporting and improve implementation standards and best practices for digital health technologies.

Digital health technologies have grown exponentially in the recent past, but many remain limited to pilot studies due to the lack of evidence or barriers to implementation. To overcome these challenges, stakeholders must learn from previous implementations and systematically document their processes. The launch of iCHECK-DH is a step toward better understanding the real-world impact of digital health technology and identifying effective strategies for future implementation.

The development of iCHECK-DH, facilitated by the Geneva Digital Health Hub (gdhub), was intended to bridge the gap between implementation research and practice. The checklist was pilot-tested on several real-world digital health implementations, and changes were made based on the feedback received, to ensure its practicality and usefulness.

iCHECK-DH focuses on documenting the minimum essential information needed to adequately describe a digital health implementation (eg, context, intervention, and implementation processes), to allow others to identify key factors for success and failure and replicate it in different settings. The author group anticipates that widespread adoption of the iCHECK-DH checklist will aid researchers and practitioners to ensure that their reports are complete, accurate, and consistent.

Systematic documentation via implementation reports can lead to the development of more effective digital health interventions and better health outcomes. Considering the usefulness of these reports in the digital health context, JMIR Publications recently announced a new article type, as an avenue to publish "implementation reports" in its open-access journal JMIR Medical Informatics.

Caroline Perrin Franck and Christian Lovis, who serve on the journal's editorial board, discuss this in their recent editorial titled "To Err Is Evolution": We Need the Implementation Report to Learn. This new article type was introduced in an effort to promote the rapid documentation and dissemination of the perspectives and experiences of those involved in implementing and assessing the effectiveness of digital health interventions.

The iCHECK-DH checklist and implementation reports can help promote transparency, knowledge transfer, and accountability in digital health, allowing stakeholders to better understand the successes and challenges of different implementations.