„Patient involvement tools to improve the quality of health services (PĮI)“, Nr. 01.2.2-LMT-K-718-03-0068

Project No. 01.2.2-LMT-K-718-03-0068              
Project title: „Patient involvement tools to improve the quality of health services (PĮI)”
Project duration:  from 2020-07-15 to 2023-08-31
Project manager: prof. dr. Danguolė Jankauskienė
Project partner: Public institution Vilnius University Hospital Santaros Clinics

Summary: Project objective – Patient involvement in the treatment process and the management of healthcare services is a complex multidisciplinary problem of science and practice. There is a lack of well-understood, modern and easily accessible instruments to combine the dimensions and approaches of patients, clinicians and managers in assessing quality of care in terms of structure, process and outcome, combining patient involvement in reporting their experiences and outcomes, the interest of the public in improving the quality of healthcare and the system’s need to be aware of the existing barriers to the organisation of care. The aim of the project is to improve patient involvement in healthcare quality management by developing an eHealth system-integrated instrument (prototype) that combines the assessment of the patient’s quality of life after treatment and his/her experience of the health system. The project will combine social and medical scientists and practitioners and involve patient organisations through sociological qualitative and quantitative research and field research and will include: a) an analysis of the patient’s journey through the health system and the identification of the most significant barriers at each of the stops along the way; b) the development of a Patient-Reported Outcome (PRO) tool for a range of diseases and conditions, based on an analysis of international experience. (c) following a field study, the instrument will be tested in pilot patient groups and a prototype (database) will be developed; (d) as a result of the project, an integrated patient engagement tool will be developed for quality management, which will be integrated into a healthcare institution’s eHealth and quality management systems.

Outcome: The project’s key output is a new interdisciplinary scientific product. A new interdisciplinary scientific product will be developed and piloted in a patient group. New patient engagement instruments will be developed and piloted in a patient group, integrating patient-reported experiences and disease outcomes to measure the quality of healthcare services at the ‘patient journey’ points identified in the research. Based on these results, a prototype adaptive electronic database will be developed that can be integrated into existing eHealth systems to measure patient-reported outcomes and experiences in the health system.

The project is funded by the European Regional Development Fund under the action No 01.2.2-LMT-K-718 “Targeted research in the field of smart specialisation” “Research carried out by high-level research teams to develop results in line with the themes of R&D activities relevant to the economic sectors, which could be commercialised later”. Grant agreement with the Lithuanian Research Council (LMT).