The eHealth@H2H team has expanded! We welcome Katharina Gottschlich to our team as the newest PhD student.
Katharina completed her bachelor’s in nursing in 2016. While completing her nurse training she became curious about the structure and organisation of healthcare systems, as she experienced how organisational aspects could make providing nursing care challenging. He curiosity led her to discover the field of health economics and she started to diversify her knowledge through pursing further training. Despite the challenges of Covid-19 and a move to Stavanger she completed her master’s thesis in Health Economics in 2021; “An economic and budget impact analysis on health care costs of autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation for Relapsing-Remitting Multiple Sclerosis patients in Norway.”
You can read about this work here: Healthcare utilization and costs associated with autologous haematopoietic stem cell transplantation in Norwegian patients with relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis - ScienceDirect
Why a PhD?
Katharina has been inspired to pursue a PhD as a nurse, thanks to many other nurses she has meet in her career so far as well as her master’s thesis supervisor, Eline Aas from University of Oslo. What inspired Katharina most was observing the dedication and passion that her masters’ supervisors showed in her research and in teaching her students. She saw how Eline’s research and mentorships of students was helping people increase their knowledge and give them the tools to succeed.
Katharina`s hope for her research is to enhance and disseminate the efficiency of remote patient monitoring (RPM) programs in healthcare resource allocation. She hopes this may improve outcomes among heart failure (HF) patients. By focusing on the health economic aspects of data from existing literature, heart failure registers, and the eHealth @ Hospital -2- Home (eHealth@H2H) project, she aims to contribute valuable insights to an efficient follow-up program for HF patients. Katharina`s PhD is funded part-time, 50%, by Stavanger University Hospital. Recently, Katharinas research was accepted for additional funding through “Hjertelaget – I minne om Leik Woie” grant allowing her to pursue her research fulltime in 2025.
What is she researching?
In Katharina’s PhD she is aiming to explore whether RPM is cost-effective compared to usual follow-up for patients with HF. The goal of her project is to unravel the complexities between RPM, quality of life, and readmissions for HF patients from the data being collected eHealth@H2H, together with real world evidence detailing the costs (money and time) associated with the intervention from the trial.
eHealth@H2H research project is important as the patient groups invited to participate in the study have a high risk of being readmitted to hospital. But only a small proportion receive follow-up at heart failure outpatient clinics due to limited capacity in current healthcare system structures. Digital home monitoring may be a promising option to improve the follow-up of these patients, but much remains to be learned about this approach, including costs and effectiveness.
Why health economic of remote patient monitoring?
Katharina, as a nurse, witnessed how current healthcare system processes can limit the nursing care that is provided to those with chronic illnesses. The digital revolution in healthcare offers possible solutions to some of these issues, but there is a need to better understand the impact of digital interventions better. She is excited to dive into the eHealth@H2H project to explore the interventions effects not just on their health outcomes, and to add in the dimension of understanding its cost-effectiveness to inform system wide decisions on the implementation of such programmes. She hopes that this additional information will lead to more supportive care for those with chronic illness to be able to access more supportive care through remote patient monitoring – if the intervention is shown to be effective.
For more:
Protocols:
Literature Reviews:
Intervention design: