Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Mar 15;23(3):e24930.
doi: 10.2196/24930.

A Semiautomated Classification System for Producing Service Directories in Social and Health Care (DESDE-AND): Maturity Assessment Study

Cristina Romero-Lopez-Alberca  1   2 , Federico Alonso-Trujillo  3   4 , Jose Luis Almenara-Abellan  4   5 , Jose A Salinas-Perez  6   7 , Mencia R Gutierrez-Colosia  8 , Juan-Luis Gonzalez-Caballero  9 , Sandra Pinzon Pulido  10 , Luis Salvador-Carulla  7
Affiliations

A Semiautomated Classification System for Producing Service Directories in Social and Health Care (DESDE-AND): Maturity Assessment Study

Cristina Romero-Lopez-Alberca et al. J Med Internet Res. .

Abstract

Background: DESDE-LTC (Description and Evaluation of Services and DirectoriEs for Long-Term Care) is an international classification system that allows standardized coding and comparisons between different territories and care sectors, such as health and social care, in defined geographic areas. We adapted DESDE-LTC into a computer tool (DESDE-AND) for compiling a directory of care services in Andalucia, Spain.

Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate the maturity of DESDE-AND. A secondary objective of this study is to show the practicality of a new combined set of standard evaluation tools for measuring the maturity of health technology products.

Methods: A system for semiautomated coding of service provision has been co-designed. A panel of 23 domain experts and a group of 68 end users participated in its maturity assessment that included its technology readiness level (TRL), usability, validity, adoption (Adoption Impact Ladder [AIL]), and overall degree of maturity [implementation maturity model [IMM]). We piloted the prototype in an urban environment (Seville, Spain).

Results: The prototype was demonstrated in an operational environment (TRL 7). Sixty-eight different care services were coded, generating fact sheets for each service and its geolocation map. The observed agreement was 90%, with moderate reliability. The tool was partially adopted by the regional government of Andalucia (Spain), reaching a level 5 in adoption (AIL) and a level 4 in maturity (IMM) and is ready for full implementation.

Conclusions: DESDE-AND is a usable and manageable system for coding and compiling service directories and it can be used as a core module of decision support systems to guide planning in complex cross-sectoral areas such as combined social and health care.

Keywords: DESDE-AND; DESDE-LTC; decision support system; impact analysis; maturity; service directories; services coding.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Conflicts of Interest: The authors are members of Psicost, a nonprofit research organization that shares the Official Registry of Computer Program Authorship of DESDE-AND together with the Government of Andalucia (Junta de Andalucía).

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Stages of the DESDE-AND study methodology. AIL: Adoption Impact Ladder; IMM: implementation maturity model; TRL: technology readiness level.
Figure 2
Figure 2
User interface of DESDE-AND web application.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Experts’ responses to the usability questionnaire. Each cell represents the qualitative score or answer of a different expert, and the last column shows the mean of their quantitative score by question and domain.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Screenshots of the web-mapping application (Google Maps) for the geographic visualisation of the services coded through DESDE-AND tool for social care planning in Andalucia (Spain).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Salvador-Carulla L, Rosenberg S, Mendoza J, Tabatabaei-Jafari H, Pandemic-Mental Health International Network Rapid response to crisis: Health system lessons from the active period of COVID-19. Health Policy Technol. 2020 Dec;9(4):578–586. doi: 10.1016/j.hlpt.2020.08.011. http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/32874862 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Ouslander JG, Grabowski DC. COVID-19 in Nursing Homes: Calming the Perfect Storm. J Am Geriatr Soc. 2020 Oct;68(10):2153–2162. doi: 10.1111/jgs.16784. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Pokhilenko I, Janssen Lm, Evers SM, Drost Rm, Simon J, König H-H, Brodszky V, Salvador-Carulla L, Park A, Hollingworth WW, Paulus At. Exploring the identification, validation, and categorization of costs and benefits of education in mental health: The PECUNIA project. Int J Technol Assess Health Care. 2020 May 28;36(4):325–331. doi: 10.1017/S0266462320000203. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Janssen Lmm, Pokhilenko I, Evers Smaa, Paulus Atg, Simon J, König Hh, Brodszky V, Salvador-Carulla L, Park A La, Hollingworth Wwm. Exploring the identification, validation, and categorization of the cost and benefits of criminal justice in mental health: the PECUNIA project. Exploring the identification, validation, and categorization of costs and benefits of education in mental health: The PECUNIA project. Int J Technol Assess Health Care 2020;(1?8) 2020 Jul 27;36(4):418–425. doi: 10.1017/S0266462320000471. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Pithara C, Farr M, Sullivan SA, Edwards HB, Hall W, Gadd C, Walker J, Hebden N, Horwood J. Implementing a Digital Tool to Support Shared Care Planning in Community-Based Mental Health Services: Qualitative Evaluation. J Med Internet Res. 2020 Mar 19;22(3):e14868. doi: 10.2196/14868. https://www.jmir.org/2020/3/e14868/ - DOI - PMC - PubMed

Publication types