Tom H Van De Belt*, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Division of Reproductive Medicine, Nijmegen, Netherlands Patrick Michel Archambault, Département de médecine familiale et médecine d'urgence, Université Laval, Québec, Canada Francisco J Grajales, eHealth Strategy Office, Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada Marjan J Faber, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Scientific Institute for Quality of Healthcare,, Nijmegen, Netherlands Craig E Kuziemsky, Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada Susie Gagnon, Centre de santé et de services sociaux Alphonse-Desjardins (Centre hospitalier affilié universitaire de Lévis), Levis, Canada Andrea Bilodeau, Centre de santé et de services sociaux Alphonse-Desjardins (Centre hospitalier affilié universitaire de Lévis), Lévis, Canada Simon Rioux, Centre de santé et de services sociaux Alphonse-Desjardins (Centre hospitalier affilié universitaire de Lévis), Lévis, Canada Karine Aubin, Faculté des sciences infirmières, Université Laval, Québec, Canada Irving Gold, Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada, Ottawa, Canada Marie-Pierre Gagnon, Faculté des sciences infirmières, Université Laval, Québec, Canada Alexis F Turgeon, Axe Traumatologie – Urgence – Soins Intensifs, Centre de recherche FRSQ du CHA universitaire de Québec, Québec, Canada Cynthia Fournier, Centre de santé et de services sociaux Alphonse-Desjardins (Centre hospitalier affilié universitaire de Lévis), Lévis, Canada Mathieu Émond, Centre de santé et de services sociaux Alphonse-Desjardins (Centre hospitalier affilié universitaire de Lévis), Lévis, Canada Marcel Heldoorn, Federation of Patients and Consumer Organisations in the Netherlands, Utrecht, Netherlands Julien Poitras, Département de médecine familiale et médecine d'urgence, Université Laval, Québec, Canada Jan A.m. Kremer, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Division of Reproductive Medicine, Nijmegen, Netherlands Gunther Eysenbach*, Centre for Global eHealth Innovation, University of Toronto and University Health Network, Toronto, Canada France Légaré, Canada Research Chair in Implementation of Shared Decision Making in Primary Care, Québec, Canada Track: Research Presentation Topic: Collaborative biomedical research, academic / scholarly communication, publishing and peer review Presentation Type: Poster presentation Submission Type: Single Presentation Last modified: 2013-09-25

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Background: Collaborative writing applications (CWAs) (eg, wikis, Google Documents, Google Knol) have the potential to empower multiple stakeholders to disseminate and apply knowledge in practice. The rapid rise in their use has created the need for a systematic synthesis of the evidence of their impact as knowledge translation (KT) tools in health care and for an inventory of the factors that affect their use.
Objective: To explore the depth and breadth of evidence concerning the impact of CWAs in healthcare, the factors that affect their use, the areas that require further systematic reviewing and the areas where more primary research is needed.
Methods: A scoping review was performed, following the Levac (2010) six-stage methodology. We searched for papers using PubMed, EMBASE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, ERIC, EPOC, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses between 2001 and 2011. We did not use any language restrictions and used the following terms: “wiki,” “wikis,” “Web 2.0,” “social media,” “Google Knol,” “Google Docs,” and “collaborative writing applications”. CWAs were defined as any technology enabling joint and simultaneous editing of online documents by many end users. The grey literature sources searched were: HTAi vortal, Mednar, OpenSIGLE, Google, Bing, Yahoo and the 2010-2011 conference proceedings for WikiSym, Medicine 2.0 and AMIA. In order to identify missing articles (stage 2) and to consult stakeholders (stage 6), 40 experts and stakeholders were invited to share relevant papers by email. In addition, three different crowdsourcing tools were proposed: a HLWIKI page (http://goo.gl/oeL1I), a Mendeley Group (http://goo.gl/alhpo) and a Google spreadsheat (http://goo.gl/QlyCC). We also invited the blogosphere via Twitter (http://goo.gl/oe4jL) to contribute to our list of papers to review. Two reviewers independently reviewed citations, selected eligible studies and extracted data using a standardized form. Papers presenting qualitative or quantitative empirical evidence concerning health care and CWAs were considered for analysis. We performed qualitative content analysis to identify the factors that affect the use of CWAs using the Gagnon (2010) framework and their effects on healthcare using the Donabedian (1966) model.
Results: Among the 111 included papers, we found 76 in the published literature, 33 from grey literature sources and 2 papers were referred to us via email. Mendeley and HLWIKI did not generate any articles. For the Google spreadsheet, 2 experts proposed 2 different papers, but none of them were included. In all, we identified 48 barriers and 92 facilitators that we classified into major themes (factors related to the CWA, users’ knowledge and attitude, human environment and organisational environment). We also found 57 positive and 23 negative effects that we classified into processes and outcomes.
Conclusions: CWAs present many potential positive and negative effects as KT tools. Moreover, little is known about how to address the many barriers to their implementation in healthcare and how to foster contributions by healthcare stakeholders. Future research should focus on conducting a formal systematic review on the effectiveness of CWAs as a KT strategy and conducting primary research to address the barriers identified for different stakeholders.