Table 1.

Final main themes, descriptors of challenges identified, and a summary of similar research findings.

Main themes	Descriptors of challenges identified in main themes	Similar research findings from others
Decision-making and communication	Involving all members of the research team in making certain decisions Considering the different preferences of research team members Communicating between the research team and Portal development team concerning technical requirements, time estimation, and planning	Challenges in communicating between the principal investigator and the research team [9] Cultural interference in group decision-making [64,65] Insufficient time from the principal investigator [9] Lack of arena for solving conflict [66] Misunderstanding project goals [67] Difficulties with communication between software personnel and nontechnical personnel (eg, different perceptions, knowledge, and experience) [66,68]
Expertise	Identifying and recruiting study personnel with the necessary expertise and experience to design and set up the feasibility study	Limited access to project personnel with the relevant expertise and knowledge [9,25,37,68] Poor retention of personnel [69] Time needed to train personnel [9,25]
External constraints	Uncertainties regarding time taken for tasks to be completed by contracted personnel outside of the research team and time taken for public authorities to make decisions and provide approvals	Time taken for ethical and regulatory approval from public authorities [69,70] Lack of adequate regulatory and legal guidance [23,25,37,38]
Flexibility	Changing intervention requirements, elements of the study protocol, and associated study documentation	Adaptations needed to allow digital tools to be used in research [25,36] Complexities of study documentation development [9] Lack of understanding of requirement complexity [68]
Planning and scheduling	Identifying required tasks to complete Estimating time to complete tasks Deciding the order in which tasks should be completed, especially concerning task interdependency	Conflicting priorities [68] Complexities of forecasting and planning project budgets [71] Poor or unrealistic project planning [9,68] Need to involve multiple stakeholders in the planning [25,37,38] Time taken to develop high-quality documents and data collection tools [68] Use of collaboration tools [66]
Technical constraints	Managing within the constraints of available technical resources and known limitations of the Portal Identifying necessary technical requirements on the Portal	Shared an understanding of software requirements [23,66,68] Data privacy and security [23-25,37,38,72,73] Access to adequate infrastructure [23,25,37,38]