JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Electronic health records (EHR) are integral to how healthcare professionals’ access, exchange, and use information in inpatient care. Although EHR create opportunities to support collaborative work, research describes both supportive and constraining relationships between EHR use and collaboration. Variation in how collaboration and EHR features are conceptualized and studied has limited cumulative understanding of EHR-mediated collaboration.

Objective:

To map how EHR have been studied in relation to interprofessional and intraprofessional collaboration in inpatient settings, synthesize the EHR features described as supporting or constraining collaborative work, and identify conceptual, theoretical, methodological, and contextual gaps in the existing literature.

Methods:

The review followed the Arksey and O’Malley framework, incorporated recommendations from Levac et al. (2010), and was reported in accordance with PRISMA-ScR guidelines. A comprehensive search of MEDLINE (Ovid), Embase (Ovid), CINAHL (EBSCO), Scopus, and the Cochrane Library identified English-language publications from 2000 to January 15, 2026. Thirty-six studies met inclusion criteria and were analyzed using descriptive and inductive qualitative synthesis.

Results:

The 36 included studies varied considerably in professional groups, clinical contexts, study designs, technologies, and theoretical approaches. Most examined interprofessional collaboration (n=30), whereas comparatively few focused on intraprofessional collaboration (n=5) or explicitly examined both (n=1). Five recurring EHR feature domains were identified in relation to collaborative work: shared information spaces; role-based information visibility and access; communication and notification features; visualization and interface design; and workflow and sociotechnical alignment. Across these domains, EHR features were described as both supporting and constraining collaborative processes, with their effects varying according to professional practices, workflows, and clinical contexts. Theoretical engagement and contextual reporting were inconsistent, and observational investigation of collaboration as enacted in practice was comparatively limited.

Conclusions:

Research on EHR-mediated collaboration in inpatient care remains conceptually, theoretically, methodologically, and contextually heterogeneous. The findings suggest that EHR features cannot be understood as inherently collaborative or non-collaborative; rather, their relationship with collaboration depends on how they intersect with professional practices, workflows, and clinical contexts. Future research should more explicitly distinguish interprofessional and intraprofessional collaboration, examine collaborative work as it unfolds in practice, and develop stronger sociotechnical explanations of how interactions among EHR features and clinical work generate supportive or constraining effects on collaboration.