About this Research Topic
Improvement science involves the study and practice of improving complex systems. Within health services, improvement science can address all aspects of quality to ensure timely, safe, equitable, patient-centered, effective, and efficient care, whilst improving patient and population outcomes and staff wellbeing.
As a relatively young field, improvement science is still defining its scope and its differentiation from other fields of enquiry and practice. There is no doubt that improvement science has been influenced by and draws heavily upon more established fields including patient safety, quality improvement, implementation science, innovation and intervention research, health service research, health economics, complex systems thinking, sociology, psychology, operational research, engineering, design, organizational and management sciences to name but a few.
Given the extensive contributions from and overlap with interests of other fields it can be questioned what is actually new in the field of improvement science, and how is it different from what has gone before?
This special issue aims to provide a space to debate and delineate the field of improvement science, both defining and advancing the frontiers of this emergent field.
As a platform to stimulate debate, the launch of this special issue is accompanied by the publication of an article outlining a conceptual map of what matters to the improvement community, along with a series of questions that help illustrate the scope of interest of improvement science, and represent the frontiers of current knowledge and practice.
Areas of the conceptual map – and topics of interest for this special issue include:
• Improvement in practice:
o Achieving improvements (impact, sustainability and spread)
o Approaches to achieving improvements (value and limitations of different approaches, fidelity of use, developing supportive organizational cultures)
o Integrating improvement in context (improvement alongside business as usual, competing agendas and priorities, adapting and responding to real work pressures)
o Measurement and evaluation to inform improvement
• Aligning improvement efforts
o The interdependence of system levels (navigating and managing multiple improvement initiatives across macro, meso and micro levels)
o The interactional work of improvement (relationships, power dynamics, motivations, facilitation)
o Enhancing the value of improvement practice and research (costs, benefits, resource allocation)
• Advancing the contribution of the improvement community
o Seeking synergies between knowledge, research, and practice to achieve improvement
o Ways of knowing and doing (making sense of diverse theoretical and philosophical perspectives)
o Building the community (education, leadership, collaborative working)
Submissions are invited to explore issues within the conceptual map of improvement science, or indeed to debate, refine or object to the contents of the map itself.
Exploration of how other fields of enquiry or practice can inform or be built on by the field of improvement science are welcome, as are examples of the challenges or approaches to make sense of multiple different perspectives – theoretically or practically.
Empirical and theoretical explorations of the frontiers of improvement science are invited, including identifying key challenges and examples of how understanding and practice can be advanced.
As a relatively young field, improvement science is still defining its scope and its differentiation from other fields of enquiry and practice. There is no doubt that improvement science has been influenced by and draws heavily upon more established fields including patient safety, quality improvement, implementation science, innovation and intervention research, health service research, health economics, complex systems thinking, sociology, psychology, operational research, engineering, design, organizational and management sciences to name but a few.
Given the extensive contributions from and overlap with interests of other fields it can be questioned what is actually new in the field of improvement science, and how is it different from what has gone before?
This special issue aims to provide a space to debate and delineate the field of improvement science, both defining and advancing the frontiers of this emergent field.
As a platform to stimulate debate, the launch of this special issue is accompanied by the publication of an article outlining a conceptual map of what matters to the improvement community, along with a series of questions that help illustrate the scope of interest of improvement science, and represent the frontiers of current knowledge and practice.
Areas of the conceptual map – and topics of interest for this special issue include:
• Improvement in practice:
o Achieving improvements (impact, sustainability and spread)
o Approaches to achieving improvements (value and limitations of different approaches, fidelity of use, developing supportive organizational cultures)
o Integrating improvement in context (improvement alongside business as usual, competing agendas and priorities, adapting and responding to real work pressures)
o Measurement and evaluation to inform improvement
• Aligning improvement efforts
o The interdependence of system levels (navigating and managing multiple improvement initiatives across macro, meso and micro levels)
o The interactional work of improvement (relationships, power dynamics, motivations, facilitation)
o Enhancing the value of improvement practice and research (costs, benefits, resource allocation)
• Advancing the contribution of the improvement community
o Seeking synergies between knowledge, research, and practice to achieve improvement
o Ways of knowing and doing (making sense of diverse theoretical and philosophical perspectives)
o Building the community (education, leadership, collaborative working)
Submissions are invited to explore issues within the conceptual map of improvement science, or indeed to debate, refine or object to the contents of the map itself.
Exploration of how other fields of enquiry or practice can inform or be built on by the field of improvement science are welcome, as are examples of the challenges or approaches to make sense of multiple different perspectives – theoretically or practically.
Empirical and theoretical explorations of the frontiers of improvement science are invited, including identifying key challenges and examples of how understanding and practice can be advanced.
Keywords: Improvement science, Quality improvement, Complex systems, Implementation, Transdisciplinary, Interdisciplinary, Health service research, Knowledge mobilisation, Knowledge translation, Coproduction, Codesign
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
