Organisation of primary health care in the Asia-Pacific region: developing a prioritised research agenda

Palagyi, Anna; Dodd, Rebecca; Jan, Stephen; Nambiar, Devaki; Joshi, Rohina; Tian, Maoyi; Abimbola, Seye; Peiris, David

Surprisingly, the workforce literature had few studies examining the role of doctors at the PHC level, with issues such as cost-effectiveness of deploying doctors versus other health cadres, professionalism, quality of care and retention relatively neglected. Knowledge gaps relating to strategies for the recruitment and retention of doctors in rural/remote PHC settings were deprioritised in round 2 of the Delphi process; the panel deemed these lower priority research issues than, for example, enhancing the role of NPHWs and models of service integration. It is worth noting that other research questions deprioritised by our panel of regional stakeholders also reflected topic areas for which there are significant gaps in the evidence base, that is, the broader context of implementation for mHealth/eHealth interventions, and integration of electronic health records in mobile PHC services. Once again, the low priority given to these topics may be a result of the lower government stakeholder representation in latter rounds of the Delphi.