HOBE+, a case study: a virtual community of practice to support innovation in primary care in Basque Public Health Service

BACKGROUND: A virtual professional community of practice (VCoP), HOBE+, has been set up to foster and facilitate innovation in primary care. It is aimed at all primary care professionals of the Basque Public Health Service (Osakidetza) in the provinces of Biscay and Araba. HOBE + is a VCoP that incorporates innovation management from the generation of ideas to their implementation in primary care practice. METHODS: We used a case study method, based on the data provided by the technology platform that supports the VCoP, and from a survey completed by HOBE + users. The target population was all primary care staff (including all professional categories) from Araba and Biscay provinces of the Basque Country (Spain), who represent the target users of the VCoP. RESULTS: From a total of 5190 professionals across all the professional categories invited to join, 1627 (31.3%) actually registered in the VCoP and, during the study period, 90 (5.5% of the registered users) participated actively in some way. The total number of ideas proposed by the registered users was 133. Of these, 23 ideas (17.2%) are being implemented. Finally, 80% of the users who answered the satisfaction survey about their experience with HOBE + considered the initiative useful in order to achieve continuous improvement and real innovation in clinical and managerial processes. CONCLUSIONS: The experience shows that it is possible to create a virtual CoP for innovation in primary care where professionals from different professional categories propose ideas for innovation that are ultimately implemented. This manuscript objectives are to assess the process of developing and implementing a VCoP open to all primary care professionals in Osakidetza, including the take-up, participation and use of this VCoP in the first 15 months after its launch in October 2011. In addition, the usefulness of the VCoP was assessed through a survey gathering the opinions of the professionals involved.