JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Evidence-based health policy (EBHP) development is critical to the judicious use of public funds. EBHPs increase transparency, accountability, effectiveness and efficiency of policies. Encouraging collaboration between researchers/knowledge producers (KPs) and policy-makers (PMs) is important, because both communities have distinct professional cultures resulting in working separately without understanding each other. Knowledge sharing is a complex process that requires understanding of cultural aspects that may reduce cultural differences and increase use of common language. Health information technology (HIT) is a useful tool to increase knowledge translation (KT) that may result in transparent use of evidence and networking in developing EBHPs. Our vision is to leverage HIT tools for a better health system that includes digitalized, open source, evidence-based, and transparent ways for collaboration and development of robust mechanisms, and sharing synthesized evidence with knowledge-user friendly forms.

Objective:

The aim is to develop a conceptual framework on KT and HIT for transparency in policy-making process and EBHPs (the KhITT framework), which will be informed by the views of four key-stakeholder groups (i.e., PMs, KPs, HIT professionals, the public) toward EBHPs. The informants may also describe practices that demonstrate EBHP process and suggest technology platforms to enable this process.

Methods:

We propose an exploratory descriptive qualitative study in British Columbia, Canada using in-depth, semi-structured interviews. To ensure data saturation and trustworthiness, we will use a non-probability purposive, snowball sample of up to 15 eligible participants in each of four stakeholder groups. We will analyze the data using content analysis. Ethics approval has already obtained by the harmonized Behavioural Research Ethics Board at the University of British Columbia.

Results:

The KhITT framework focuses on various stakeholders’ perspectives including for better understanding their perceived needs and priorities in identifying issues with EBHP to make informed recommendations. Currently (September 2019), we are recruiting study participants. The anticipated completion date for data collection to be end of January 2020. We estimate the expected findings of this study to be published end of the year 2020.

Conclusions:

Our ultimate goal of this study is to develop a conceptual framework and describe the technology platforms that would enable the EBHP process. We anticipate that our rigorous content analysis can produce insights and themes able to address our objectives, contribute to an in-depth understanding of the EBHP process within British Columbia, highlight all influential factors, explicitly disseminate and communicate the study results, identify issues with EBHP and provide informed recommendations to address them, and enhance efforts toward transparent EBHPs. Clinical Trial: N/A