Adoption of enterprise architecture for healthcare in AeHIN member countries

BACKGROUND: Healthcare organisations are undergoing a major transformational shift in the use of information and digital health technologies. Enterprise architecture (EA) has been incrementally adopted in many healthcare organisations globally to facilitate this change. EA can increase the effectiveness of an organisation’s digital health capabilities and resources. However, little is known about the status of EA adoption in low-income and middle-income countries. This study aimed to evaluate the challenges, goals and benefits associated with adoption of EA for healthcare in the Asia eHealth Information Network (AeHIN) member countries. METHODS: We developed an EA Adoption Evaluation framework with four principal layers: governance, strategy, EA and performance. The framework guided the development of a questionnaire to investigate the goals, challenges and benefits faced before and during EA adoption by healthcare organisations. SAMPLE: 26 participants from 18 healthcare organisations in the Asia-Pacific region representing 11 countries. Organisations included Ministries of Health, Universities, Non-Governmental Organisations and Technical Advisory Groups. FINDINGS: Only 5 of the 18 organisations had begun adopting EA. The goals expressed for EA adoption were to address issues such as interoperability, lack of technical infrastructure and poor alignment of business and information technology strategies. Cost reduction was less emphasised. The main challenges to adopting EA was the lack of EA knowledge, leadership and involvement of senior management. CONCLUSION: The adoption of EA is incipient in AeHIN member healthcare organisations. To encourage EA adoption, these organisations need to invest in internal capacity building, senior management training and seek independent EA expert advice to systematically identify and address the barriers to adopting EA.