Mini Stare-HI: Guidelines for reporting health informatics evaluations in conference papers

Background: To improve the quality of reports of health informatics evaluations we recently devised and published a guideline named STARE-HI, now formally endorsed by IMIA. Objective: To develop a prioritization framework of ranked items (a mini-STARE-HI) to assist authors when reporting health informatics evaluation studies in a restricted space conference paper. Method: We invited 111 editors of health informatics conference proceedings and reviewers and authors of health informatics evaluation studies to score 106 reporting items on a scale ranging from “0 - not necessary” through to “10 - essential” by a web-based survey. Results: The response rate for the survey was 63% (70 out of 111). The most important items (score >9) were “Interpret the data and give an answer to the study question”, “Whether it is a laboratory, simulation or field study” and “Description of the outcome measure/evaluation criteria”. Four items had a mean score <6. Conclusion: It has been possible to produce a ranking of reporting items from STARE-HI according to their prioritized relevance for inclusion in space-limited conference papers. We believe that this prioritization framework can improve quality and utility of conference papers on health informatics evaluation studies.