“How can innovations and interventions be integrated sustainably into care practice?”

From the perspective of implementation and dissemination research it can be determined that a) only a fraction of interventions for people with dementia is translated into care practice, for example, in the form of expert standards or guidelines, b) the of interventions is not carried out systematically, and c) the systematic, structured, and sustainable implementation and dissemination as well as the continuous evaluation of implementation and dissemination effects are usually omitted. With this in mind, implementation and dissemination research can be considered as an integrative part of health care research.

The public health sector is facing the challenge of implementing evidence-informed practice, and this requires dealing with existing operation routines. Initiating changing processes refers to both, to the individual person as well as to the organization, and to the general socio-political framework. The outcome of this is a plurality of heterogeneous factors which impact on the predictability and controllability of these processes. As a result, the implementation and dissemination process necessary for transferring innovations and interventions into daily operation routines often stretches over several years.

Effective strategies are essential to develop more successful implementation and dissemination processes in terms of sustainably influencing the quality of care. Theoretical models of implementation and dissemination processes are necessary for the development of these strategies. Both, the effectiveness of the implementation/dissemination (implementation success) as well as the outcome of an intervention are focus of this kind of research. Whereas internationally there is already a pool of relevant knowledge available, in Germany implementation and dissemination research is still a very young branch of science. Therefore, the research group “Implementation and Dissemination Research” (ImDi) is not only engaged in the generation of its concepts but also in the transferability of this knowledge into the German health system.

The research group ImDi is concerned with the following questions:

• Which conceptual models are suitable to develop successful strategies for implementation and dissemination processes in terms of sustainably influencing the quality of care for people with dementia more effectively?
• How can care practice questions be translated into questions of implementation and dissemination research, and how can ideas for solutions be tested and evaluated?
• What can implementation and dissemination research contribute towards evidence-informed practice becoming part of care routines?

Ongoing projects of the AG Implementation Science:

• DISTINCT - Dementia: Intersectorial Strategy for Training and Innovation Network for Current Technology
• Evaluation Demenzstrategie Rheinland-Pfalz (new)
• PreBeDem - Teilprojekt: Partizipative Forschungsstrategien der Demenz-Versorgungsforschung 
• FRAME-SR - Theoretical approaches to process evaluations of complex interventions in health care; Project lead Dr. Tina Quasdorf
• COVIDemX3 - "What makes health systems resilient to crises and what can we learn from the COVID-19 pandemic for the overall societal challenge of dementia?