Tackling topics in primary care: Using consensus-oriented decision-making, a socio-technical method to biobank implementation

Abstract

Innovative health research plays a critical role in not only understanding disease but also studying unique features within our primary care (PC) population, leading to personalized treatment plans. Biobanking in PC can provide insights into disease mechanisms in the families and individuals we look after; a basic resource for science-based therapeutic innovation and better targeting of preventive and therapeutic interventions to those most likely to benefit. Integrating a technology in a health care system whether within an institution, region or network is challenging. Therefore, a number of experts call for a sociotechnical approach where technical methods specific to the technology are used with social research methods to understand health care systems in order to create a technology that is deemed “successful” in implementation. This complex but very pertinent context will be used to highlight consensus-oriented decision making (CODM). This is a qualitative method that seeks the consent of all participants for an efficient participatory decision-making process. In order to arrive at a decision, the method uses an effective meeting structure, skillful facilitation (from a facilitator) and a clear decision rule. In the case of a primary care-based biobank, we describe in this methods paper how to determine cohesion levels of foundational capabilities using a CODM as a sociotechnical approach. This method will be particularly relevant for primary care during this COVID-19 crises as there have been more and more calls for the creation of biobanks to facilitate and accelerate research.