Ensuring Socio-technical Interoperability in Digital Health Innovation Processes: An Evaluation Approach

Integrating Digital Health Innovations (DHI) into healthcare practice remains a challenging task for innovators. They continuously seek for actionable ways to fulfil the complex web of requirements set by the target environment. A socio-technical understanding of interoperability offers structurization to this complexity and becomes a key property that innovators want to ensure during the innovation process. Nevertheless, scientific guidance remains abstract rather than applicable. This research paper builds on this point and follows the question how innovators can evaluate their DHI process holistically and tangibly to promote the later integration into complex healthcare systems. It therefore presents an evaluation approach based on the Refined eHealth European Interoperability Framework (ReEIF) and results of a qualitative content analysis. Here, detailed descriptions of the six ReEIF levels and 181 potential parameters for a selfassessment tool have been derived from prior literature. These findings stimulate future research on interdependencies within identified aspects of socio-technical interoperability and promote applicable tools for digital health innovators.