Current Projects
Learning Health Systems in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Scoping Review.
We aim to further understand what is known in the existing literature about how learning health systems components are operationalized in low- and middle-income countries.
International Society for Quality in Health Care 2024 Annual Meeting
Members of the INACT-LHS Team, led by Jeffrey Braithwaite, PhD, will attend the 40th ISQua conference taking place in Istanbul, Turkey in September 2024. Here they will host a pre-conference workshop titled, "Next Generation Learning Health Systems". They will build off the work accomplished during the workshop in 2023 and highlight how progress can be made in adopting LHS characteristics, showcasing real world exemplar learning health systems.
More information on the 40th ISQua Conference
The Learning Health System Toolkit
The LHS toolkit developed by the International Network for Activating Learning Health Systems (INACT-LHS) aims to provide guidance and tools for developing and implementing a LHS.
Contact for Questions: lhstoolkit@gwu.edu
Recent Projects
Data to Knowledge to Improvement: Creating the Learning Health System
This article by the INACT-LHS team focuses on several building blocks that can create and enable a learning health system.
Although efforts have concentrated on leveraging data, evidence-based practices, and quality improvement, healthcare systems have yet to fully integrate these strategies for ongoing learning. This analysis aims to elucidate the concept of learning systems and offer examples illustrating their application and resulting outcomes.
Read the article (British Medical Journal)
International Society for Quality in Health Care 2023 Annual Meeting
INACT-LHS Team members Paige McDonald, Jeffrey Braithwaite, Robert Verheij, and Tom Foley attended the ISQua conference in Seoul, South Korea. In addition to presenting a poster outlining a quality improvement program for physical therapists, the team held a Learning Health Systems pre-conference workshop. Our team covered the following areas related to LHS:
- Consider LHS principles, practices and progress in their context
- Examine their application across a wide range of settings
- Assess where participants believe they are in terms of progress with LHSs in their domains
- Workshop ideas drawn from our research with participants across low-, middle- and high-income settings
- Discuss the competencies needed by participants and others interested in enhancing care quality and patient safety through LHS knowledge
- Consider what tools are available and what type of tools still need to be developed, to aid participants in developing LHSs.
Institute for Healthcare Improvement National Forum 2023
Jessica Phillips represented the INACT-LHS team at IHI’s National Forum in 2023 in Orlando, FL. She presented a poster on the team’s LHS toolkit.
Dissemination and Implementation Conference 2022
Members of the INACT-LHS Team attended the Dissemination and Implementation Conference in 2022, where they hosted a panel discussion titled, "Implementing LHS: Embedding Research, continuous improvement, and learning for proactive and responsive systems of care". Team members discussed the concept of learning health systems, learning communities, characteristics of LHS, LHS requisite competencies - results from a scoping review, and results from a quality improvement study.
Additionally, two posters were presented on behalf of the INACT-LHS Team:
- Using feedback on patient health outcomes to improve orthopedic physical therapist practice: a quality improvement study
- Identifying requisite learning health system competencies: A scoping review
LHS Scoping Review
Learning health systems (LHS) integrate knowledge and practice through cycles of continuous quality improvement and learning to increase healthcare quality. LHS have been conceptualized through multiple frameworks and models. Our aim is to identify and describe the requisite individual competencies (knowledge, skills and attitudes) and system competencies (capacities, characteristics and capabilities) described in existing literature in relation to operationalizing LHS.