Introduction

Internationally, billions of dollars have been invested in Health Information Technologies (HITs).1 In the UK, digitally enabled care forms a key pillar of the NHS long term plan, and responses to COVID-19 have been underpinned by data sharing and the use of new technologies.

However, HITs represent a wide range of interventions used for storing, analysing or sharing electronic clinical data. They can be highly complex with wide-ranging impacts on health systems (eg, hospital-wide patient records (EPRs) or more focused interventions that are designed to solve specific clinical problems (eg, a dose checking algorithm). These variations mean that developing and assessing HITs can be challenging. There may also be disagreement about the main objectives for using/implementing digital interventions; their impacts can evolve unpredictably over time and there is a lack of agreement about how to define and measure whether HITs have been successful. These factors can be particularly relevant in paediatric settings where HITs may need to be reconfigured for children’s health and care needs, and where there may be specific legal and regulatory frameworks that need additional consideration.2

This article aims to provide an overview of how HIT development, implementation and assessment approaches can be used to overcome these challenges so that the most effective HITs can be selected for use in clinical practice. A real-world case study is included in figure 1 to illustrate how the principles described in the overview can be applied in practice.3