The word follow-up is the action and effect of following or being followed, in the popular context it is often used as a synonym for persecution, observation or surveillance. Being this same used mainly in the context of police, detective, legal, medical, scientific, statistical investigations, among others; to observe and analyze the evolution of a certain case. Although the term can be applied to any investigation, process or project with constant observation.
After having the data obtained in the project, it is necessary to identify the deviations and evaluate the results, to later take actions in order to modify the project to obtain the desired results.
Taking the medical case as an example, monitoring a patient is essential to observe the evolution of the same, a patient with a serious illness needs constant attention from his doctor to be attentive to his health, and in this way determine if the problem of the patient was solved without major problem or, on the contrary, he needs to change his treatment, and if necessary, a new follow-up of the patient would be done with the updated treatment to solve his problem.
Generally, the term is used in a positive way, when an investigation or a person is followed up it is to ensure their best performance, as in the case of a company monitoring the performance of its product to collect data and perform an analysis for its later improvement.
By monitoring the process you can:
- Determine if a new design is feasible.
- Calculate the number of units needed to supply a future demand (statistical monitoring)
- Determine the performance of a new model compared to an older model
- Determine if adoption and use goals will be met
- Determine the effects that the introduction of external agents may produce
- Gather more data on needs, resources, and performance of the same for later improvements and new experiments
There are also negative follow-ups, such as jealousy follow-up, where an individual can closely follow (or hire a detective for this purpose) the movements of their partner if they suspect infidelity or something.
