Guest editorial: Science, technology, innovation and research: the ultimate conundrum?

I was recently working with a group of researchers who are in the field of nursing informatics; it was an international group who have only recently been brought together. The researchers came from a broad range of discipline backgrounds and not all of us were nurses. There were computer scientists, psychologists and informaticians; as a consequence the conversation was broad and interweaved. However, what did emerge was a real tension in the group between the need to provide policy makers and purchasers of health services with the evidence they need now to support real-time decisions and the time it takes for researchers to develop, design, set up and undertake a robust programme of research. This was graphically displayed when we started to talk about the evidence in the field of telehealth. These technologies are currently very fashionable. There are a lot of companies actively seeking to sell their goods into an expanding market place. Everyone would appear to see some aspect of telehealth as a solution to some aspect of health need, but look again at the evidence base for this and we know so little. This, however, has not stopped the UK committing itself to putting 3 million people into interventions in the next few years. As a recent public launch of the campaign notes: ‘‘‘3millionlives’ ’ is about transforming service delivery for people with long-term conditions, and/or social care needs, by utilising telehealth and telecare within health and social care services, enabling millions of people to receive the significant benefits evidenced in the UK’s Whole System Demonstrator trials; the largest randomised control trial of telecare and telehealth in the world