Abstract

Historically, medical research has progressed slowly with long delays between initial scientific discovery, replication of findings, development of interventions, widespread adoption of effective and acceptable treatments and resulting impact on population health. The 2006 Cooksey Report, A Review of UK Health Research Funding, identified the need to improve health research in the UK and defined two key gaps in the translation of health research: - translating ideas from basic and clinical research into the development of new products and approaches to treatment of disease and illness; and - implementing those new products and approaches into clinical practice. The population e-health perspective expands the concept of translational research ‘from bench to bedside’ to ‘from byte to bedside and population health’. E-health research helps bridge the second translational research gap by bringing together data from fragmented systems to support research into aetiology, the identification of potentially modifiable protective or risk factors, informing the design of interventional studies , and quantifying population impact post implementation. The latter is particularly relevant to universities given the importance of ‘Impact case studies in the Research Excellence Framework. The presentation will cover a range of methodological developments in e-health research and use applied research case studies to demonstrate these concepts in practice, with examples ranging from large scale health services research studies, the creation of total population e-cohorts, trials and the evaluation of non-health care interventions on health.

Lancet 2014;383:1517-1518. Published Online November 29, 2013 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(13)61750-X