Hospital contextual factors affecting the implementation of health technologies: a systematic review

To keep a high quality of assistance it is important for hospitals to invest in health technologies (HTs) that have the potential of improving health outcomes. Even though guidance exists on how HTs should be introduced, used and dismissed, there is a surprising gap in literature concerning the awareness of hospitals in the actual utilization of HTs.

We performed a systematic literature review of qualitative and quantitative studies aimed at investigating hospital contextual factors that influence the actual utilization of HTs. PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, Econlit and Ovid Medline electronic databases were searched to retrieve articles published in English and Italian from January 2000 to January 2019. The quality of the included articles was assessed using the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme checklist for qualitative studies, Newcastle-Ottawa Scale for the cross-sectional studies and the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool for mixed method studies.

We included 33 articles, which were of moderate to high methodological quality. The included articles mostly addressed the contextual factors that impact the implementation of information and communication technologies (ICTs). Overall, for all HTs, the hospital contextual factors were part of four categories: hospital infrastructure, human resource management, financial resources and leadership styles.

Our systematic review reported that the contextual factors influencing the HTs utilization at hospital level are mainly explored for ICTs. Several factors should be considered when planning the implementation of a new HTs at hospital level. A potential publication bias might be present in our work, since we included articles published only in English and Italian Language, from January 2000 to January 2019. There remains a gap in the literature on the facilitators and barriers influencing the implementation and concrete utilization of medical and surgical HTs, suggesting the need for further studies for a better understanding.