When complexity science meets implementation science: a theoretical and empirical analysis of systems change (30 April 2018)

Summary

Implementation science has a core aim – to get evidence into practice. Early in the evidence-based medicine movement, this task was construed in linear terms, wherein the knowledge pipeline moved from evidence created in the laboratory through to clinical trials and, finally, via new tests, drugs, equipment, or procedures, into clinical practice. We now know that this straight-line thinking was naïve at best, and little more than an idealisation, with multiple fractures appearing in the pipeline.