Design Theory to improve health evidence retrieval

TL;DR

This paper develops a design theory and innovative artefacts to enhance health evidence retrieval, aiming to remove barriers and support evidence-based clinical practice using cloud-based solutions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel design theory and three artefacts, including a context-aware architecture, for improving health evidence retrieval systems.

Findings

Produced three innovative artefacts: a contextual model, a unified architecture, and a context-aware architecture.

Evaluated artefacts through academic reviews, publications, and conferences.

Presented a generalized design theory to mature the knowledge in health evidence retrieval.

Abstract

Objective: Our study objective is to design a feasible technology solution for health organizations to remove barriers to evidence-based clinical information retrieval, and improve Evidence-Based Practice. Methods: Literature from 2010 to 2020 was reviewed to define problems in evidence-based clinical information retrieval with recommendations from literature used to define solution objectives. Design Science Research is used to complete three projects in a research stream using cloud services such as Web-Scale Discovery, Content Management System, Federated Access, Global Knowledgebase, and Document Delivery. Design thinking, systems thinking, and user-oriented theory of information need are adopted to construct a design theory. Results: The research stream produced three novel and innovative artefacts: a contextual model, a unified architecture, and a context-aware unified architecture which we evaluate as part of academic reviews, scholarly publications, and conference proceedings in various research stream stages. A fourth artefact or design theory is presented to generalize results as mature knowledge.