AHRQ National Resource Center Evaluation Toolkits

With the large investments required for health IT projects, stakeholders are increasingly demanding to know what the actual value of these projects has been, or will be. Evaluations allow us to determine whether or not what one has set out to accomplish has been accomplished, and to help us to understand what has worked in a given project and what has not. Lessons that emerge from evaluations help to guide both your team, as well as others, in their approach to projects in the future.

Evaluations must therefore be an integral part of any health IT project. The AHRQ National Resource Center, in response to frequent requests for assistance in developing evaluation plans, developed the attached toolkit to help project teams think through the process of developing an evaluation plan of their project. Section I outlines a step by step process for a team to determine what the goals of a given project are, what is important to their stakeholders, what needs to be measured to satisfy those stakeholders, what is truly feasible to measure, and how to measure those items. Section II includes a list of measures that are often employed in health IT projects. Each of the provided tables includes a list of possible measures, suggestions on data sources that can be leveraged for each measure, cost considerations, potential pitfalls and general notes. Section III contains some examples of a variety of implementation projects.

Health IT Evaluation Toolkit (Updated June 2009)

The AHRQ National Resource Center's Health IT Evaluation Toolkit is intended to help demystify the process of creating a plan to evaluate your health IT project. We hope you and your project team finds the toolkit to be helpful and we wish you good luck in developing your plan.

Download the Health IT Evaluation Toolkit (PDF, 478 Kb)

Health IT Evaluation Measures - Quick Reference

Within the Health IT Evaluation Toolkit are many suggested measures that address the following types of outcomes:

• Clinical Outcomes
• Clinical Processes
• Provider Adoption and Attitudes
• Patient Adoption
• Knowledge and Attitudes
• Workflow Impact
• Financial Impact

A brief description of each measure is provided within the Toolkit including its quality domain, suggested data sources, and potential risks.  These Health IT Evaluation Measures: Quick Reference Guides expand individually on some of the measures to include current findings in the literature, methodology for measurement, and analysis considerations.  Each guide will provide evaluators the tools they need to design a study around a given measure.

Access the Health IT Evaluation Measures: Quick Reference Guides

HIE Evaluation Toolkit

The AHRQ National Resource Center has also created a version of the toolkit targeted towards health data exchange projects. This version offers suggestions and examples for evaluation of the exchange of health information between various community stakeholders (e.g., providers, health departments, pharmacies, laboratories). The AHRQ National Resource Center believes that evaluation of data exchange is crucial to determining the impact of this new type of health IT project on health care quality and safety.

Download the HIE Evaluation Toolkit (PDF, 222 Kb)

This page last updated on July 1, 2009