What are some ways to identify unmet healthcare needs through research?

Talk to patients. No. Listen to patients. Observe patients. Facilitate patient story-telling. Be patient. I want you to know that I am a patient.

In Latin America, the Unmet Basic Needs method has made an important contribution to the identification of certain critical deficiencies of the population and the characterization of poverty. From the great variety of data contained in censuses, it is necessary to select appropriate indicators to reflect the primary needs of the population. The selection process is generally made up of four steps: 1. Determine the group of minimum basic needs that can be studied with census information. 2. Choose census indicators that represent these needs. 3. Define the critical level of satisfaction for each need. 4. Ensure that the selected indicators correspond to poverty situations.

In my experience, conducting a literature review is a necessary first step to forming solid hypotheses that can be tested to develop better care methodologies, resulting in improved care delivery and health outcomes. By processing the existing research and analyzing any potential gaps or trends in that research, you are able to approach the subject from a new perspective and make new discoveries. In the age of big data, we are able to access and process a lot of information quickly, meaning the future of literature reviews will likely expand to a point where AI is conducting literature reviews given certain parameters, leading to new innovations and new technologies to be explored.

In my experience, to identify unmet healthcare needs you must first understand the demographics and location. Through analytical research this information can be retrieved. Next, utilizing EHR or RWD will provide the connection to community health centers and FQHC which will reveal the chronic illnesses. Keep in mind, the biggest challenge is not the unmet health need but instead the barriers keeping patients from addressing these health needs.

Literature Review: Surveys and Questionnaires: Focus Groups: Interviews: Conduct qualitative interviews with key stakeholders, such as patients, healthcare providers, policymakers, and community leaders. Explore their experiences and insights regarding healthcare gaps. Observational Studies: Undertake observational studies in healthcare settings to observe patient interactions, healthcare practices, and system inefficiencies that may indicate unmet needs.

Needs assessment needs to be comprehensive to avoid selection bias and must identify the true needs of the population rather than the goals or ambitions of those performing the needs assessment.

Identifying unmet healthcare needs involves a multi-faceted approach, starting from conducting literature reviews to spot knowledge gaps, gathering direct feedback through patient surveys and healthcare professional interviews, analyzing epidemiological data to identify at-risk populations, and examining patient outcomes to understand treatment efficacy. Delving into healthcare data, assessing the medical technologies, and understanding the impact of regulations reveal systemic care barriers and innovation opportunities. Also, social media and online forums offer insights into patient experiences. This strategy ensures a well-rounded understanding of where healthcare can evolve to meet patient needs more effectively.

✓Perform a needs assessment by directly engaging with the target population or healthcare community. ✓Surveys, interviews, and focus groups can help gather firsthand insights into the challenges and requirements faced by individuals or communities. ✓Personal Experience: Conducting needs assessments in rural healthcare settings revealed specific challenges in access to specialized medical care, leading to the identification of unmet healthcare needs in those regions.

While needs assessments are generally useful, one needs to guard against bias when conducting them. It can be argued that due to funding, career advancement opportunities, and specialization, the researchers have a bias towards identifying certain needs when conducting the needs assessment and often when it leads outside the expected findings, it take fidelity to science and a strong ethical compass for one to report these. Additionally, a community participatory approach would better capture the needs of the community than focusing on stakeholders who are up higher and not on the ground.

Assess the community's needs in the geographic square kilometers where you live. Identify the economic threshold and reveal the resources available to mitigate the gaps in services and their funding.

✓Conduct a gap analysis by comparing the current healthcare services or interventions with established standards or best practices. ✓ Identify disparities between existing healthcare provisions and the ideal state, highlighting areas where needs are not adequately met. ✓Personal Experience: In a project focused on primary care delivery, a gap analysis revealed inconsistencies in preventive care services, highlighting opportunities for targeted interventions to address unmet needs.

A gap analysis needs to be coupled to a comprehensive risk assessment of the effects of the missing components. This helps prioritise tasks and focus limited resources. It also helps reduce anxiety around low risk missing components.

Conducting a gap analysis in healthcare involves comparing the current state of healthcare services with the desired or optimal state, and identifying the gaps or differences between them. To identify unmet healthcare needs through gap analysis, follow these steps: Clearly outline the specific healthcare area, population, or service you are analyzing. Determine the key stakeholders, including healthcare providers, patients, policymakers, and other relevant parties. Define criteria and standards for evaluating healthcare services. This can include clinical guidelines, quality metrics, patient satisfaction, and accessibility. Prioritize the gaps. Root Cause Analysis. Develop Action Plans. Monitoring and Evaluation with Improvement.

Identifying gaps in healthcare would require looking at the overall system at work. This would be like communicating and listening to patients who come to the clinics and asking them about their difficulties, such as access to certain kinds of medications or issues with timely care because of the disconnect between the systems interacting with the patient. Again, checking in with the patient regarding missed appointments would help healthcare providers to identify the gaps and through research could also help identify patterns amongst their patients to understand their needs.

Identifying unmet healthcare needs can involve conducting surveys, interviews, and focus groups with patients, healthcare professionals, and community members. Analyzing existing health data, trends, and gaps in services can also provide valuable insights. Collaboration with healthcare organizations, observing patient experiences.

1. Bring in leaders and other stakeholders from the target community. 2. Present your literature review and gaps analysis to them. 3. Let them compare it to their lived experience. 4. Co-decide on an initial solution 5. Let them present it to the community. 6. Support them with infrastructure, resources, and technology to scale impacts

1. Establishing community models, that does not mean experts forming models that they think will work for people on the margins, but empowering people from the margins to make sustainable community health care models.

In my nascent professional understanding of healthcare management in emerging economies, the capacity of rural healthcare (especially to achieve optimal maternal and early childhood PCM outcomes) is being strengthened well in the last-mile and is also being monitored transparently, in a bottom-up manner. However, while discussing healthcare for the urban poor, there is a persistent challenge of 'scale'. How do authorities sensitize hospital staff on quality care and patient management, given the sheer volume of cases they have to deal with on the regular? During my recent few hospital visits I realized there is so much red-tape and bureaucracy to wade through in both private and public hospitals. Employee engagement must be strengthened!

✓Engage with diverse stakeholders, including healthcare professionals, policymakers, and community representatives. ✓Collaborative discussions can provide valuable perspectives on unmet healthcare needs, considering the various viewpoints of those directly involved in healthcare delivery. ✓Personal Experience: Stakeholder engagement sessions with healthcare providers and patient advocacy groups uncovered unmet needs in patient education and support services for chronic conditions.

Long-Term Relationship Building: Overlooking the need for sustained stakeholder management in healthcare projects is common. Focused within the project's immediate scope, the lasting benefits of relationship cultivation are often neglected. Research managers emphasize trust for prolonged collaboration and successful healthcare initiatives. Cultural Competence Training:A frequent oversight is the neglect of insights from stakeholders beyond the project's scope. While perspectives are considered during the project, the long-term benefits are missed. Advocated by research managers, cultural competence training for healthcare professionals enhances care quality, improving stakeholder relationships and ensuring ongoing initiative effectiveness.

One of the greatest ways to meet the health care needs is to form a win-win alliance between a healthcare organization and a research institution to focus on high healthcare value or service relying on evidence-based approach.

Ask the people, and they will tell you exactly what they want. Community engagement often unveils unmet needs, and prevents wasteful use of resources, e.g. we're often focused on solving complex problems while we ought to focus on the lower scales of Maslow's Hierarchy (basic needs). Design with the community, not for them.

✓Explore innovative research methods and technologies to identify emerging healthcare needs. ✓This may involve using data analytics, digital health tools, or other technological advancements to uncover trends and patterns indicating areas with unmet healthcare needs. ✓Personal Experience: Applying machine learning algorithms to healthcare data revealed patterns suggesting a rising need for personalized preventive care strategies, prompting further exploration in this area.

Esta es ruta de identificación de oportunidades que me parece muy útil y rápida. Sin embargo, su uso en las áreas de salud no está tan difundida. En Guatemala hemos utilizado esta metodología en ambientes académicos no solo para identificar necesidades de una forma centrada en el paciente, sino que también ha permitido generar prototipos y en algunos casos testear soluciones. Dado que estas metodologías en términos generales no requieren grandes recursos las considero ideales para ambientes y sistemas de salud con limitaciones de presupuesto. Además, son muy apropiadas para co crear con los potenciales involucrados soluciones que sean coherentes con el sistema de creencias predominante en el grupo de interés.

My go-to innovation method is interdisciplinary cooperation after understanding and researching the need. Healthcare is quite a generous system that brings lots of disciplines together and just capturing everyone's ideology within the sector makes for great improvements

In my experience regarding pediatric health a coordinated effort is key. The right research approach can give a clear picture of priorities to address through new interventions, policies, education, funding, or system changes. Using big data and AI, it is possible to identify unmet needs under-researched areas, trends in pediatric health conditions, risk factors, and emerging issues to stay on top of evolving needs and outcomes.

✓Implement robust evaluation methods to assess the effectiveness of existing healthcare interventions. ✓This process may uncover gaps in the outcomes achieved, signaling areas where improvements or new approaches are needed. ✓Personal Experience: Through rigorous evaluation methods, we identified shortcomings in the outcomes of a community health program, leading to a reevaluation and redesign to better meet the healthcare needs of the community

I agree but when it comes to Evaluation methods, morality should be taken into account! Criticizing or complementing an employee should be thorough and fair. I’ve seen some managers bullying healthcare forces so cruelly that the healthcare employee prefers to resign and stops growing and developing skills.

With multiple evaluation tools existing, it is easy to choose the wrong tool for a study or even realize as the study progresses that the tool selected is not the best fit for a study. For example, conducting a qualitative analysis before a quantitative assessment could help choose the proper method for assessment while also contributing to refining the research. Since conducting a study uses resources to refine the research question through qualitative analysis, it ensures that the resources are directed in the right direction.

Os métodos de avaliação precisam ser repensados e reavaliados a partir de diferentes perspectivas. E para isso precisa levar em consideração marcadores sociais, colocando isso como viés desde o planejamento, execução até chegar a avaliação.

Something else to consider is especially if data is being gathered to quantify unmet need of groups that have largely been systemically excluded, it is important to work closely and develop relationships with community groups and also respect privacy concerns of groups.

L’identification des besoins non satisfaits en matière de soins de santé peut également se faire au travers des communautés virtuelles de santé. Ce sont notamment des espaces virtuels où patients, professionnels de santé ou encore proches de patients se retrouvent pour échanger autour d’une thématique commune qui les préoccupe (Par exemple les groupes ou forums des réseaux sociaux). Puisqu’elles vont faciliter la liberté d’expression de leurs membres dans un environnement souvent bienveillant et de partage, les communautés virtuelles de santé constituent un terrain pertinent pour investiguer sur les besoins non satisfaits en soins de santé.

The use of big data is the most effective approach to identify present and future problems. Connecting all pharmacies to the ministry of health identifies health problems in different regions and even areas in one city , for example. All problems can be addressed if you have sufficient computer power and can include not one but all variables. This would be in the realm of quantum computing. Including all data will help you to accurately predict the future and test all possible outcomes.

Another junk LinkedIn AI generated article. This one under Research Skills ?? I cannot even try to pretend this will be fun What are some ways to identify unmet healthcare needs through research? I am a physician and scientist. I am tried of answering garbage questions about "healthcare" and "research". Also, if I may be so bold, the answers people are providing like sheep seem extra dumb, but maybe I am just extra annoyed Either you believe and science or not. Let's not pretend, many people in the US and around the world do NOT believe in science. Many people on LinkedIn do NOT believe in science. Forget this weak word research, what is the point in talking about science when people do not believe science is real? We have big issues...

Research governance ensures ethical, rigorous, and relevant healthcare research, identifying unmet needs through transparent, accountable practices. It promotes collaboration among researchers, healthcare providers, and communities, guiding the development of innovative solutions to improve health outcomes. By relevant policies it encourages researchers to focus on areas where gaps in knowledge or services exist. Additionally, research governance frameworks often encourage collaboration between researchers, healthcare providers, and community stakeholders, fostering a holistic approach to understanding and addressing healthcare challenges.