Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: Dec 20, 2019
Date Accepted: Oct 8, 2021
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
The development and formative evaluation of “E-Ready” – a self-help implementation readiness tool to facilitate e-health initiatives in healthcare
ABSTRACT
Background:
E-health initiatives are essential to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare. However, the pace of implementation of e-health initiatives are lagging. Earlier literature has documented barriers to implementation of e-health initiatives, but even with quite extensive research into how to best perform implementation there still is a gap between research and practice. This paper describes the development and formative evaluation of the generic self-help tool E-Ready designed to be used by managers, project leaders or others responsible for implementation in a broad range of healthcare settings.
Methods:
We generated a first version (E-Ready 1.0) based on implementation theory. A formative evaluation was undertaken through expert panels, cognitive interviews and statistical tests using multivariate item analysis. E-Ready 1.0 was also field tested among the target population. Iterative revisions were conducted during the formative evaluation process and E-Ready 2.0 was generated.
Results:
The E-Ready tool consists of a questionnaire and a guidebook. The questionnaire assesses implementation readiness within conditions for change at the workplace, individual conditions for change, readiness among management, readiness among colleagues, perceived consequences on status quo and workplace attitudes. The questionnaire consists of six sections, whereof five yielded Cronback´s Alpha values higher than 0.7, which was deemed to be acceptable. One section was reworked to increase the internal validity. The guidebook contains a brief introduction, instructions on how to use the tool, information on the themes of E-Ready, how to create an implementation plan, quick advice for success and tips for further reading on implementation theory. Conclusion: E-Ready 2.0 is a new promising self-help tool to guide and improve implementation of e-health initiatives in health care settings.
Citation
