Factors that promote or inhibit the implementation of e-health systems: an explanatory systematic review

To systematically review the literature on the implementation of e-health to identify: (i) barriers and facilitators to e-health implementation, and (ii) outstanding gaps in research on the subject.

MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, PSYCINFO and the Cochrane Library were searched for reviews published between 1 January 1995 and 17 March 2009. Studies had to be systematic reviews, narrative reviews, qualitative metasyntheses or meta-ethnographies of e-health implementation. Abstracts and papers were double screened and data were extracted on country of origin; e-health domain; publication date; aims and methods; databases searched; inclusion and exclusion criteria and number of papers included. Data were analysed qualitatively using normalization process theory as an explanatory coding framework.