Learning Cycles: Bridging Research, Policy and Practice

Topics addressed in the Swiss Learning Health System (SLHS) are developed in close collaboration with all partners involved, in order to facilitate the flow of information at the levels of policy, research and practice. In this way, a continuous learning process for all actors in the Swiss health system will be implemented.

This process consists of 5 steps:

Topic Generation
In a first step, the SLHS network identifies urgent topics and challenges in the Swiss healthcare system together with involved stakeholders.

Topic Selection
Based on the suggestions, a list of topics is generated and regularly updated, which serves as a basis for topic prioritization in the SLHS.

Evidence Syntheses
Prioritized topics are addressed by the academic partner institutions in the form of evidence syntheses, namely Policy Briefs or Rapid Response Syntheses.
Policy Briefs are stand-alone documents but in SLHS they serve primarily as the basis for Stakeholder Dialogues. A Policy Brief describes an issue or problem by explaining relevant contextual factors and formulating a set of evidence-informed recommendations. For each recommendation, relevant issues are explained, as well as potential barriers and facilitators to their implementation. Rapid Response Syntheses are structured similarly, but are produced in a shorter time frame to address temporally urgent issues.

Dialogue and Next Steps
The SLHS organizes Stakeholder Dialogues. During the dialogue, relevant stakeholders discuss the issue and recommendations outlined in the Policy Brief, as well as barriers and facilitators. The goal is to develop a common understanding of the issue and to discuss next steps. 

Implementation and Evaluation
In the sense of a learning system, the SLHS evaluates possible implementation efforts of relevant stakeholders after the dialogue and supports them, if possible.