Table 4.
Practices for managing the challenges of implementation.
| Dimension and practices | Mentions (n=9), n (%) | |
| Individual-technology fit: health professionals |
|
|
|
|
Involving all the stakeholders, professional groups, and a technical expert in planning the service | 2 (22) |
|
|
Testing and piloting the eHealth services before implementation | 4 (44) |
|
|
Repeatedly informing health professionals about the implementation, changes, and the influence of the new services to their work for an extended period via unit meetings, training, personal contacts, and laminated instructions | 4 (44) |
|
|
Proactively responding to health professionals’ concerns | 1 (11) |
|
|
Involving frontline leaders and health professionals in planning the services and implementation is needed to create buy-in | 3 (33) |
|
|
Providing adequate introductory knowledge, repeated training, and personal guidance as well as a test environment, which is required to train professionals | 4 (44) |
|
|
Training a superuser to encourage health professionals and support implementation | 1 (11) |
|
|
Proceeding slowly and gradually, so professionals have time to adjust to and practice using the new services | 2 (22) |
|
|
Reserving extra personnel resources and time for the changing tasks | 1 (11) |
|
|
Providing technical support with a responsible person when needed | 1 (11) |
| Individual-technology fit: patients |
|
|
|
|
Identifying a patient group that can benefit from an eHealth service and having a patient point of view | 2 (22) |
|
|
Involving patients early on and creating new methods needed to motivate patient participation | 2 (22) |
|
|
Informing patients in an interesting way and providing leaflets or other marketing materials | 2 (22) |
|
|
Collecting constant feedback from patients and improving the service through the use of questionnaires, contacting patients for further details to create a partnership, and request for feedback from patients that did not use the service | 3 (33) |
|
|
Encouraging health professionals to discuss the digital service when meeting a patient and to reserve digital appointments with the patient | 2 (22) |
|
|
Offering technical support during problems | 1 (11) |
| Health professional–task fit |
|
|
|
|
Identifying the current work processes and needs | 1 (11) |
|
|
Fitting the eHealth service plans to current care processes to support and ease health professionals’ work, reduce the number of phone calls, increase remote work, and increase interoperability of the systems so that health professionals can view patient information from one system and do not need to record the same information twice | 5 (56) |
|
|
Ensuring the service is quick, easy, and effortless to request and use | 5 (56) |
|
|
Planning changes in the work processes well in advance and piloting the services to test the new processes and show the benefits of the service | 1 (11) |
| Organization and management–technology fit |
|
|
|
|
Identifying the needs early | 1 (11) |
|
|
Fitting the eHealth service plans to the technical possibilities, including demonstrations and examples of existing services to help illustrate the possibilities | 2 (22) |
|
|
Evaluating the work cost of implementation, a responsible person, resources needed, and the potential benefits | 2 (22) |
|
|
Planning the implementation carefully in advance and defining the roles and responsibilities of the participants, changes, ways of relieving resistance, and solutions to problems | 5 (56) |
|
|
Involving an active multi-professional team | 1 (11) |
|
|
Indicating more than one person as a spokesperson to support the implementation, especially frontline leaders, who were considered important in influencing their subordinates’ commitment and providing resources for implementation | 2 (22) |
|
|
Involving and informing top management to provide support and resources and ensure the availability of spaces and devices | 2 (22) |
|
|
Identifying measures of impacts and making baseline measurements in the very beginning | 1 (11) |