Design Theory to improve health evidence retrieval

Abstract: Objective: Our study objective is to design a feasible technology solution for health organizations to remove barriers to evidence-based clinical information retrieval, and improve Evidence-Based Practice. Methods: Literature from 2010 to 2020 was reviewed to define problems in evidence-based clinical information retrieval with recommendations from literature used to define solution objectives. Design Science Research is used to complete three projects in a research stream using cloud services such as Web-Scale Discovery, Content Management System, Federated Access, Global Knowledgebase, and Document Delivery. Design thinking, systems thinking, and user-oriented theory of information need are adopted to construct a design theory. Results: The research stream produced three novel and innovative artefacts: a contextual model, a unified architecture, and a context-aware unified architecture which we evaluate as part of academic reviews, scholarly publications, and conference proceedings in various research stream stages. A fourth artefact or design theory is presented to generalize results as mature knowledge.