PERSPECTIVE article
Front. Health Serv.
Sec. Implementation Science
This article is part of the Research TopicFrontiers of Improvement Science in Health ServicesView all articles
Improving complex systems with improve-mentation: challenges and solutions
Provisionally accepted
- Karolinska Institutet (KI), Solna, Sweden
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The fast-changing environment for healthcare in all countries calls for new approaches to achieving improvements. This article proposes that improve-mentation is one such approach. Improve-mentation synergistically combines elements of the sciences of implementation and improvement as well as experience to carry out change in different settings. One feature is iteration of the change so as to adapt the change to the evolving context for private and public healthcare in different contries. The article addresses challenges posed by increasing complexity and describes the methods used in four different improve-mentation frameworks, using case examples to illustrate different resolutions to generalisabily and other issues.
Keywords: implementation, Improvement, Complexity, Adaptive implementation, context, Quality methods, Implementation strategies, Implementation Tools
Received: 14 Oct 2025; Accepted: 28 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ovretveit. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: John Ovretveit
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