Abstract
Background: Client-accessible patient records potentially contribute to patient-centered care by facilitating shared decision-making, enhancing interdisciplinary collaboration, and promoting patient’s autonomy. To achieve this, three Dutch organizations providing ‘care for youth’ developed an electronic patient record (EPR-Youth). EPR-Youth supports working processes of all three organizations and is fully accessible for adolescents and for parents of children aged 0-16 years. Co-creation was chosen as implementation approach for this e-Health intervention that not only intervenes with technology (hardware) but also transforms working processes (orgware) and professional behavior (software). Objective: to investigate the implementation process of EPR-Youth and to determine barriers and facilitators.Methods: a mixed methods design was used. To guide the process evaluation, Pfadenhauers’ Context and Implementation of Complex Interventions framework and Proctor’s theoretic framework on implementation were used to define implementation outcomes and describe setting and context. Target groups were parents, adolescents, professionals using EPR-Youth, and all stakeholders in the implementation process.Results: Barriers in the implementation process of EPR-Youth were the complexity of collaboration between stakeholders and the lack of clarity about leadership and project planning. Facilitating factors were clarifying the vision, setting deadlines, and a pioneering spirit.Acceptability of the client-portal was high among all users. Adoption of the client-portal was highest among parents of children aged 0-3 years and among higher educated parents.Professionals’ doubts about user-friendliness and about the match with vision and working processes were partly due to lack of knowledge of all system functionalities. Conclusion: The implementation of EPR-Youth, the first Dutch electronic patient record facilitating both preventive child health and youth care, was successful on ‘hardware’ level. To complete implementation on ‘software’ and ‘orgware’ level, client information needs attention, as well as training of professionals. Further research is needed to gain insight into barriers to access the client-portal. Although co-creation was an essential ingredient to reach project goals, situational leadership with more direction at the start and room for disruption is needed to guide this process.