National Monitoring and Evaluation of Health IT: Protocol for a Scoping Review.

BACKGROUND: Monitoring the pace of Health Information Technology (HIT) adoption across states is critical for providing data to formulate future national and regional HIT policies. However, repeated monitoring of the progress on implementation of the strategies is often scarce. The lack of systematic monitoring of progress in availability and use of HIT has led to a need for an overview of the key concepts and methodologies used in the scattered scientific literature. The scoping study aims at achieving both in-depth and broad results, identifying all relevant material, regardless of the design. This paper presents and discuss a protocol for a scoping review.

OBJECTIVE: We aim to provide a comprehensive overview of the existing body of knowledge and to assess the extent, range and nature of monitoring and evaluation of availability and use of HIT at a national or regional level. This scoping review includes peer reviewed and grey literature.

METHODS: The search strategy is iterative and developed in cooperation with information specialists and key researchers in the field. Inclusion, data extraction, and quality assessment will be done by two independent reviewers. Data will be collated, summarized and analyzed thematically.

CURRENT STATUS: 1760 references were included for screening. After screening for eligibility based on title and abstract 84 publications were included for full text review, which is currently being done. Final results are expected in March 2017.

CONCLUSION: This scoping review will map the existing body of literature and describe the current approaches to monitoring and evaluating HIT on a national or regional level. The review will provide evidence-based information in order advance national strategies for monitoring and evaluating availability and use of HIT.