Tailored implementation for chronic diseases (TICD): A project protocol

Background: The assumption underlying tailoring is that implementation interventions are most helpful if these effectively address the most important determinants of practice for improvement in the targeted setting. The aim of the Tailored Implementation For Chronic Diseases (TICD) project is to develop valid and efficient methods of tailoring implementation interventions to determinants of practice for knowledge implementation in chronic illness care. Methods: The TICD project has organized the planned empirical research in three work packages that follow the three main steps of tailoring: identification of determinants of healthcare practice, matching implementation interventions to identified determinants of practice, and applying and assessing the tailored implementation interventions. These three key steps of tailored implementation will be applied to targeted chronic conditions in five different healthcare systems: cardiovascular disease in the Netherlands, obesity in England, depression in Norway, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in Poland, and multimorbidity in Germany. The design and interpretation of empirical research will be informed by systematic reviews of previous research on tailoring implementation interventions. Discussion: The TICD project will provide much needed evidence on the advantages and disadvantages of different methods of identifying important determinants of practice and selecting implementation strategies that take account of those. It will also provide five rigorous evaluations of tailored implementation interventions for five different chronic conditions.