Holistic Interoperability from a Digital Health Innovator's Perspective: An Interview Study

Current discussions on ensuring inter-organizational care and inter-sectoral collaboration in digital health increasingly prioritize interoperability as a target property. Previous conceptualization either prioritize a technological scope or focus on socio-technical interoperability between organizations. In doing so, the potential to draw on a holistic understanding to support innovators to increase the diffusion of digital health innovations (DHI) into healthcare practice remains untapped to date. This work addresses this gap. An expert study with 29 participants was conducted to explore whether and how the Refined eHealth European Interoperability Framework (ReEIF) can be used to manage DHI processes. The interviews provide insights regarding relevant interoperability aspects from an innovator perspective and opportunities to address these within DHI processes. On this basis, we propose a Digital Health Innovation Interoperability Framework (DHIIF), which is intended to help practitioners achieve more interoperability while improving the diffusion probability of their DHI.