Factors influencing interorganizational collaboration in eHealth: A scoping review

Background: The development, evaluation, and implementation of eHealth interventions requires a multidisciplinary approach in which different disciplines from different organizations are working together. This interorganizational collaboration is beneficial for a successful eHealth intervention since collaboration with all involved stakeholders ensures that it fulfills the needs and wishes of all stakeholders involved and a better fit with the context in which the intervention will be implemented. To guide interorganizational collaborations the existing literature provides different kinds of reviews, frameworks, overviews, and models within factors that facilitate or hinder interorganizational collaboration in different domains. However, an overview of influential factors that can guide organizations with their interorganizational collaboration in the context of eHealth is lacking. Therefore, a scoping review was conducted aiming to provide an overview of factors influencing interorganizational collaboration during the development, evaluation, and implementation of eHealth interventions.

Methods: PubMed, PsycINFO, and Web of Science were searched in April 2022 for English or Dutch peer-reviewed empirical studies on interorganizational collaboration in the context of eHealth. The study characteristics and findings on influencing interorganizational collaboration were extracted into a data extraction form, summarized, and coded per article to come up with an overview of factors. A search update will be conducted in April 2023 in which new articles will be screened and eligible articles will be analysed.

Findings: The search in April 2022 resulted in 3212 references after removing duplicates from which 40 articles were eligible for inclusion. The preliminary results of this review show that interorganizational collaboration is influenced by factors as (1) alignment in goals, timelines, priorities, and expectations, (2)
communication, (3) collaboration strength, (4) collaboration culture, (5) collaboration context, (6) history of the collaboration, (7) leadership and management, (8) trust and (9) commitment.

Discussion: This scoping review provides an overview of factors influencing collaboration between organizations in the context of eHealth. During the presentation we will discuss the implications of this overview of factors for interorganizational collaboration during the development, implementation, and
evaluation of eHealth interventions. Future research could explore in depth how the factors found influence interorganizational collaboration in the context of eHealth.