Procurement of innovation terminology usage in health care: A scoping review protocol

Abstract Background Although procurement of innovation is an established policy tool used to stimulate collaboration between supply- and demand-side entities during the development of new technologies, there is little scientific literature describing the process as applied in health care settings. Furthermore, what literature exists contains inconsistencies of terms, definitions, and/or concepts related to procurement of innovation. This protocol details our process for a systematic scoping review to describe the current scope of literature and to provide terminology clarification. Methods A search strategy will be used to search PubMed, EMBASE [OVID], CINAHL [EBSCO], PsycINFO [ProQUEST], ABI/INFORM, ISI Web of Knowledge, EBSCO, JSTOR, the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, and Google Scholar; grey literature, non-scientific reports, policy documents and expert recommendations will also be considered as additional sources for texts. Two researchers will screen titles and abstracts for inclusion/exclusion criteria, followed by full texts. We will extract the following data, if applicable: title, authors, date, author affiliations, country, journal/publication characteristics, setting, aims/purpose, methodology, sample characteristics, assessment/evaluation tools, outcome parameters, key findings, relevance, and terminology usage/definitions. Results will be presented narratively and visually. Discussion This paper describes the steps of our proposed systematic scoping review to identify and analyse scientific and non-scientific literature related to procurement of innovation and/or innovation of procurement in health care settings, with a particular focus on digital health technologies. Results are intended to demonstrate the current scope of literature, to provide clarity in language and therefore to serve as a first step for further research in this growing field.