Success Dimensions of the Online Healthcare Communities of Practice

The existing studies on online Communities of Practice (CoPs) in healthcare organizations have not adequately focused on the factors affecting KM initiative success and acceptance. Thus, establishing an evaluation framework has become essential for the advancement of research and practice in this area. In online communities of practice, the process of measuring and developing an evaluation framework has become quite complicated and challenging due to the intangible nature of the knowledge. Moreover, the lack of standards and studies, related to online CoPs measurements and evaluation frameworks, respectively, triggers the need for intensive studies in this area. In this context, this chapter reviews online CoPs success factors and identifies the gaps in our understanding. The authors classify the existing studies based on the area of evaluation, such as health and non-health domains. The chapter concludes by proposing a conceptual framework to measure the success of online CoPs in the healthcare sector.