Table 1 A protocol for practice-centred evaluation that privileges care

- Organise evaluation around care ‘scenarios’ where EPR related change has (or has not) occurred

- Organise evaluation activities around core values and priorities of those participating. In our case: patient wellbeing, learning and care

- Expect opportunistic or emergent change to be generative of significant benefits and problems

- Encourage those experiencing or producing health information technology-related changes to participate in designing and where possible carrying out evaluation of those changes

- Work collaboratively in groups including at least one person who is directly involved in the change being evaluated

- Use multiple data sources (e.g. questionnaire data, system usage data, interviews), admit diversity of opinion and resist synthesis or judgement

- Encourage collective reflection on the boundary of involvement in evaluation (i.e. ‘who’ or ‘what’ is included/excluded) and seek ways to counter persistent exclusion

- Develop an evaluation ‘watch list’ of areas of practice where it is anticipated EPR related changes to practice will occur in order to capture if/when those changes occur

- Report findings in a way(s) that ‘speaks’ to the community of practice concerned

- Include in this list: change anticipated as part of specific service improvement activities; and/or change relating to EPR functionalities that have been either speculated upon and/or specified in advance; and/or potential negative changes to practice

- Capture ‘before change’ data relevant to both practice and outcomes, where possible or relevant

- Wait for change to materialise ‘in practice’ before collecting ‘after change’ data

- Actively include care scenarios where EPR related changes have: not proved possible; only partially been achieved; required an unanticipated amount of effort; proven exceptionally slow to achieve; or proven unachievable