New technology and therapies are a significant contributor to transforming health care. However, it’s estimated that 80 per cent of technology projects fail, due to uncertainty, abandonment and lack of adoption. This project is embedding evaluation, creating a customised, co-designed evaluation framework to improve outcomes for people with disabilities, their families and carers.

Lead: Dr Deborah Debono, Faculty of Health

Duration: 2019-2021

Better evaluation and benefit measures are needed to ensure innovations are fit for purpose and successfully integrated to provide optimal benefits to people with disability.

UTS researchers and disability services provider Onemda’s Innovation Centre are working together to gather evidence on the implementation of innovation, using the Innovation Centre as a “living lab”. They propose to co-design a framework to support bespoke evaluation of diverse interventions developed in the centre that is both accurate and timely. 

The expertise of consumers with disability, carers, service providers, advocacy groups and health researchers will shape this multi-method project. Phases 1 and 2 will each use a concurrent transformative mixed methods research design, combining a literature review, interviews, observation and surveys to co-develop an evaluation framework and then test the acceptability and feasibility of a prototype framework. Normalisation process theory will be the theoretical framework used to integrate results across these methods to inform refinements of the framework and development of an implementation toolkit.

What impact will we create? 

The framework and a proposed “toolkit” will build capacity and support best practice not only within Onemda but across the disability sector as the resources are disseminated more widely. This is expected to increase the impact from innovation for people with disability, their carers, support organisations and policymakers. More successful innovation, including cutting-edge therapies, assistive technology and evidence-based practice, has the potential to improve lives by enhancing capacity and independence.

Who are we working with?

  • The Onemda Association Inc.
  • Professor Jo Travaglia, Discipline Lead – Collaborative for Health Services Management, Faculty of Health
  • Dr Hamish Robertson, Faculty of Health
  • Dr Phillippa Carnemolla, Faculty of Design Architecture and Build
  • Natalie Taylor, Implementation Scientist, Cancer Council
  • Domenic Svejkar, Design Innovation Research Centre
  • Dr.Carla Saunders, Faculty of Health
  • Professor Bronwyn Hemsley, Faculty of Health, Head of Discipline Speech Pathology
  • Professor Simon Darcy, UTS Business School, Management Discipline
  • Professor Fiona Brooks, Assistant DVC (Research Development)
  • Dr David Carter, Faculty of Law, Health Justice Group

Funding Support

  • Onemda Association Inc.

Network Research Themes

  • Inclusion and Social Participation
  • Health and Wellbeing