At Matter of Focus, our approach to evaluating digital interventions is informed by our own work evaluating the impact of OutNav.

Over the past five years we have refined an approach to evaluating the development, delivery and impact and sustainability of digital interventions. Our approach is especially suited to relational digital services and projects where simple measures of engagement or task success are not enough by themselves to understand the impact of the work.

We have put this learning into practice in a range of key digital developments:

Digital Health and Social Care Innovation Centre, University of Strathclyde

We are working with DHI as they take an embedded, outcome focused approach to evaluate three aspects of their work:

  • Moray Rural Centre of Excellence for Digital Health and Care
  • Digital Mental Health Innovation Cluster
  • Decision Support Project

Transforming Local Systems Pathfinder Programme, Scottish Government

This project is being delivered with four local pathfinders:

  • NHS Highland
  • Midlothian HSCP
  • East Ayrshire HSCP
  • Aberdeen HSCP

We have worked alongside this programme as a learning partner since March 2020. The project teams have been working in OutNav over the past two and a half years capturing learning and assessing their progress with the work. We are working with the team to build on this evidence to carry out a final evaluation of the programme, which will be published in Spring 2023. Out of this work came a simple but robust framework to evaluate the effectiveness, sustainability and impact of digital health interventions.

Health Technology Wales

We are working with Health Technology Wales to help them map and track their strategic, national approach to the identification, appraisal and adoption of new health technologies into health and care settings across NHS Wales.

In October 2021, Health Technology Wales won the David Hailey Award for Best Impact Story for its approach to evaluating the impact of research into a treatment for MS.

Innovative Healthcare Delivery Programme

The Innovative Healthcare Delivery Programme (IHDP) seeks to fundamentally change the way data and analytics are used to drive improvement in health outcomes, by fostering new relationships between the NHS, industry, academia, and the third sector. They are using OutNav to set out and track progress of their key programmes.


On 30 November 2022, we attended Digital Health and Care Fest in Glasgow with a stand and a poster, to share our work developing an evaluation framework for digital interventions.

If you would like to learn more about our work in this area, you can view our ePoster showcase on the Digital Health and Care Fest 2022 website.

If you are planning a digital project and would like a chat about how OutNav could help, please get in touch.

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