Rapid Evaluations of Innovations: A Scoping Review

Abstract BackgroundThere is increasing demand for more rapid evaluation of innovation in health and social care, to support timely decision-making about service redesign. These pressures have increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. Making evaluations more rapid raises challenges in terms of ensuring rigour and the effective use of resources, but assessment of rapid evaluation methodologies has been lacking. MethodsWe conducted a scoping review to map the developing field of methods of rapid evaluation of innovation in health and social care, to describe the existing literature, categorise different approaches to rapid evaluation, and identify knowledge gaps. We searched multiple databases and websites of key organisations. We prioritised studies with relevance to the context of the NHS in England. We extracted information to enable us to classify and map existing studies on key characteristics. We undertook a narrative synthesis to identify the evidence and the gaps; focussing on the different approaches to conducting rapid evaluation in primary research. ResultsWe identified 14069 records from our searches of which 352 explored rapid evaluations of innovations, methods for rapid evaluation or rapid evaluation of implementation. Our scoping review identified four main approaches used for rapid evaluation: (1) Use of a methodology designed specifically for rapid evaluation;(2) Increasing rapidity by doing less or using a less time-intensive methodology;(3) Use of alternative technologies and/or data to increase the speed of an existing evaluation method; (4) Adaptation of part of a non-rapid evaluation DiscussionThis scoping review identified a lack of clarity about ‘rapid evaluation’ but identified some useful preliminary categories. There is very little comparative research on the impact of using rapid rather than standard evaluation. There is a need for clarity and consistency in terms of what constitutes rapid evaluation, the development of specific methodologies for making evaluation more rapid, and assessment of the advantages and disadvantages of rapid methodology in terms of rigour, cost and impact.