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A Viewpoint on Evidence-based Health Informatics, Based on a Pilot Survey on Evaluation Studies in Health Care Informatics

^a Institute for Health Information Systems, UMIT—University for Health Sciences, Medical Informatics and Technology, Hall in Tyrol, Austria
^b Department of Medical Informatics, Academic Medical Center, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

^_* Correspondence and reprints: Dr. Elske Ammenwerth, Institute for Health Information Systems, UMIT—University for Health Sciences, Medical Informatics and Technology, Hall in Tyrol, Austria (Email: Elske.Ammenwerth{at}umit.at).

Received for publication: 09/14/06; accepted for publication: 01/26/07.

Concerned about evidence-based health informatics, the authors conducted a limited pilot survey attempting to determine how many IT evaluation studies in health care are never published, and why. A survey distributed to 722 academics had a low response rate, with 136 respondents giving instructive comments on 217 evaluation studies. Of those studies, half were published in international journals, and more than one-third were never published. Reasons for not publishing (with multiple reasons per study possible) included: "results not of interest for others" (1/3 of all studies), "publication in preparation" (1/3), "no time for publication" (1/5), "limited scientific quality of study" (1/6), "political or legal reasons" (1/7), and "study only conducted for internal use" (1/8). Those reasons for non-publication in health informatics resembled those reported in other fields. Publication bias (preference for positive studies) did not appear to be a major issue. The authors believe that widespread application of guidelines in conducting health informatics evaluation studies and utilization of a registry for evaluation study results could improve the evidence base of the field.