Gathering evidence to scale-up your digital health initiative

On Friday 11th December 2020, the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing (EIP on AHA) and EHTEL co-organised a training workshop on the MAFEIP tool.

MAFEIP is a useful tool that helps people working in a variety of health and care initiatives and projects on digital innovation to:

• Assess the effectiveness of their efforts, and focus especially on how cost-effective they are.
• Understand how impactful their efforts will be over time.
• Understand ultimately whether to invest in specific technologies.

As MAFEIP expert, Frans Folkvord of Open Evidence, Barcelona, Spain said, about MAFEIP’s use: “It is helping to show the effects of interventions, especially effective interventions.” Today, it is helping researchers to look not simply at digital tools use in health and care, but particularly in COVID-19-related digital interventions.

Over the years, MAFEIP has been applied by over 300 users, in more than 100 cases, and in more than 20 European countries. At least six European projects have made use of it. Among the most current of projects is the series of large-scale pilots involved in Gatekeeper[1]. There are hopes that ongoing projects, such as NWE-Chance[2] and vCare[3] can also use the tool.

This workshop helped digital innovators to understand both what MAFEIP can do in theory but also how it can be applied in practice. The session investigated in detail the implications of experimental designs in projects. It clarified what digital innovators need to know when starting to plan an investigatory study and what data they will need to collect.

Astrid van der Velde, who is from Zwolle in the Netherlands, used the example of the Isala Heart Centre to explore:

• What are relevant dependent and independent variables in a study?
• What are relevant key performance indicators?
• What kind of experimental design should be used?
• How important are randomised control trials?
• How are costs calculated? What types of costs need to be examined?

In total, some 25 people attended the virtual workshop. They came from a variety of regions and Reference Sites around Europe, from the most northerly regions to the most southern. They also included people from several small and medium-sized enterprises and businesses.

To find out more about the MAFEIP tool and what types of evidence to start consider gathering:

• Visit the MAFEIP website.[1]
• Explore the MAFEIP series of use cases.[2]
• Approach the MAFEIP leaders and join the MAFEIP community[3].

[1] http://www.mafeip.eu

[2] https://ec.europa.eu/eip/ageing/mafeip_en

[3] Approach info@mafeip.eu

[1] https://www.gatekeeper-project.eu

[2] https://www.ehtel.eu/activities/eu-funded-projects/nwe-chance.html

[3] https://www.ehtel.eu/activities/eu-funded-projects/vcare.html