Co-Chair:

• Stephanie Medlock, Amsterdam UMC, Netherlands

Co-Chair:

• Elisavet Andrikopoulou, University of Portsmouth, UK

Main Objectives:

Information and communications technologies (ICTs) are being used increasingly in health care. It is evident that the use of modern ICT offers tremendous opportunities to reduce clinical errors, to support health care professionals, and to increase the efficiency of care. However, there are also hazards associated with such technologies. Therefore, rigorous, generalizable evaluations of ICT applications in health care are absolutely necessary. Based on this, the aims of the working group are:

• to foster transdisciplinary dialogues between experts from informatics, medical informatics, economics, health care, health services research, clinical epidemiology, biometry, psychology, sociology, ethnography, organizational development, operations research and other evaluation fields, on a European level, and to encourage exchange on methodological issues between researchers from different traditions;
• to offer an opportunity to share knowledge with the aim of obtaining profitable cross-fertilization among different fields of expertise and especially between quantitative and qualitative research;
• to promote a combined research agenda to develop frameworks and toolkits for information systems evaluation, offering guidelines for an adequate combination of evaluation methods and tools;
• to discuss and clarify the networking needs for long-term evaluation research in medical informatics, and to promote combined research proposals at a European level.

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Publications and events 2025-2026

• Rigby M, Andrikopoulou E, Prgomet M, Medlock S, Wong ZS, Cresswell K. Validation and evaluation as essentials to ensuring safe AI health applications. In Good Evaluation-Better Digital Health: Proceedings of the EFMI Special Topic Conference 2025 2025 Oct 2 (pp. 52-56). IOS Press.
• Rigby, Cresswell K, Andrikopoulou A, Silsand L, Prgomet M, Wong Z. Conceptualising a Digitalised Dynamic Evaluative Pyramid as the Cortex of an Adaptive Complex Learning Health and Care System. (submitted)
• Rigby M, Cresswell K, Wong Z, Andrikopoulou E, Prgomet M, Eriksen J, Piera-Jiménez J. Crucial Concepts in ‘Opening the Personal Gate between Technology and Health Care’, MIE2026
• Andrikopoulou E, Rigby, Cresswell K, et al. From Chatbots to MythTok: A Narrative Review of LLMs as Health Information Mediators on Social Media, ICIMTH 2026
• Piera-Jiménez J, Kohler S, Rigby M, Cresswell K, Silsand L, Scott P, Andrikopoulou E, Prgomet M, Biondich P. The Open Platform Paradigm: Architecture for the Next Generation of Health Information Exchange in the Era of Generative AI, IMIA (accepted).
• Piera-Jiménez J, Rigby M, Cresswell K, Alhuwail D, Andrikopoulou A. Balancing Personalisation and Interoperability: An Enterprise Architecture Approach to Person- Centred Digital Health”, MIE2026

Other Activities 2025-2026

• Elisavet Andrikopoulou has been appointed EFMI Publications Officer
• The working group continued its joint activity with the IMIA Working Group on Technology Assessment and Quality Development. Regular online meetings of the combined WG were organized.
• Several members of the group attend MIE 2026 and STC 2025, and we have had  submitted several papers, workshops and WG meetings.
  
  

Activities planned for 2026-2027:

• Cresswell et al. Proportionate Evaluation: Pragmatic Principles for the Safe Implementation of Innovative Digital Health Interventions (in preparation).
• Elske Ammenwerth is leading a review paper of the 20+ years of WG evaluations.
• The WG will have a hybrid working group meeting at MIE 2027, together with the IMIA WG.
• The WG is actively recruiting new members.
• The WG is planning workshops and further papers to MIE and STC 2027.

  If you want to become a member of the EVAL Working Group, please contact with the Chair of the Working Group