University of Oxford and RAND Europe partner to launch DECIDE: The Oxford-RAND Europe Centre for Rapid Evaluation of Technology-Enabled Remote Monitoring

RAND Europe and the University of Oxford’s Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences are excited to launch the DECIDE (Digitally Enabled Care in Diverse Environments) initiative, to help transform healthcare through rapid evaluation of technology-enabled remote monitoring. DECIDE is funded by a £2 million award from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).

DECIDE addresses an urgent need for rapid evaluation of technology-enabled remote monitoring. This stems from growing use of technology across health and social care, with increasing use of digital tools, devices, and applications (such as activity trackers, blood pressure monitors) to remotely monitor an individual’s health and wellbeing. The aim of remote monitoring using technology is for patients and their clinical team to seamlessly exchange information (for instance about vital signs, like heart rate), enabling on-going monitoring and management of people’s health and social care. This offers potential for real-time understanding of health and care status and proactive intervention.

However, new technologies and services are still evolving. Questions remain about how effective technology-enabled remote monitoring initiatives are, how and where they add value to existing services and how people feel about using them. An important theme of DECIDE’s research is responding to inequalities so that the evaluations take into consideration diverse groups of people.

Working in partnership with evidence users such as NHS England, DECIDE will respond rapidly to priority areas for evaluation, generating and rapidly disseminating evidence that can support informed decision making about the development and adoption of technology-enabled remote monitoring interventions and services.

Dr. Sonja Marjanovic, DECIDE Lead and Director of Healthcare Innovation, Industry and Policy, RAND Europe, said:

“This partnership between the University of Oxford and RAND Europe reflects our shared commitment to establishing rapid and robust evidence that can inform decision-making about whether, when, where and how, technology-enabled remote monitoring can support health and care services, and population health and well-being.

"We hope that our multidisciplinary expertise in innovation, health and social care services research and evaluation will provide incisive and timely evidence and insights on implementation and success criteria in this space, with inequalities being integral to all evaluation efforts.

"As DECIDE begins its journey, it promises to support wider efforts to help transform healthcare delivery, enhance patient outcomes, and contribute to the broader advancement of health and care services.”

DECIDE is now operational and welcomes collaborations, more information is available via the website.