Virtual health communities of practice success factors: towards taxonomy and a framework

Abstract

Virtual communities of practice VCoPs are recognised as a KM initiative, whereby practitioners conduct discussions and share their experiences online. Presently, a lack of widely accepted or overall conceptual framework exists that addresses the important aspects of effective KM to specifically determine whether virtual health communities of practice VHCoPs are successful. The absence of such a conceptual framework motivates the present review of literature pertaining to the measurement of VHCoPs for the purpose of extracting the main taxonomy. The literature is analysed and synthesised with the aim of identifying the success factors of VCoPs within the healthcare sector. In addition, the review critically evaluates the factors, theories and methodologies adopted in VHCoPs literature. The present study provides a framework and concepts to measure the success of VHCoPs. The present study finds that the success of VHCoPs can be measured in terms of their technical, semantic, human, and social dimensions; and their effectiveness in managing knowledge.