Assessing healthcare organisations' readiness to implement a learning health system: protocol for questionnaire...

Area of Science:

• Health Services Research
• Healthcare Management
• Knowledge Translation

Background:

• Translating research findings into clinical practice is slow, with up to 17 years for 14% of research to be adopted.
• A learning health system (LHS) approach can accelerate the transformation of data into actionable knowledge and improved performance.
• Healthcare organizations' willingness and capacity to adopt LHS innovations are not well understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To generate validity evidence for a measure assessing healthcare organizations' readiness to implement a learning health system (LHS) approach.
• To provide a robust tool for evaluating organizational preparedness for LHS implementation.
• To inform strategies for overcoming barriers to LHS adoption in healthcare.

Main Methods:

• A three-round Delphi method will be employed to achieve expert consensus on the LHS readiness questionnaire.
• The questionnaire's domains, subdomains, and items were developed from a comprehensive literature review.
• Purposive and snowball sampling will recruit international LHS experts, with data analyzed using descriptive and content analysis.

Main Results:

• Consensus will be established on the relevance, clarity, and comprehensiveness of the LHS readiness questionnaire items.
• Validity evidence will be generated to support the psychometric properties of the readiness measure.
• The study will yield a validated instrument for assessing organizational readiness for LHS.

Conclusions:

• The developed and validated measure will be a valuable tool for assessing healthcare organizations' capacity for LHS implementation.
• Findings will guide healthcare leaders in preparing their organizations for LHS adoption.
• This research contributes to accelerating the integration of evidence into healthcare practice through LHS.