eLearning for health system leadership and management capacity building: a protocol for a systematic review

Introduction: Health leadership and management capacity are essential for health system strengthening and for attaining universal health coverage by optimizing the existing human, technological, and financial resources. However, in health systems health leadership and management training is not widely available. The use of information technology for education (i.e. eLearning) could help address this training gap by enabling flexible, efficient, and scalable health leadership and management training. We present a protocol for a systematic review on the effectiveness of eLearning for health leadership and management capacity building in improving health system outcomes. Methodology and analysis: We will follow the Cochrane Collaboration methodology. We will search for experimental studies focused on the use of any type of eLearning modality for health management and leadership capacity building in all types of health workforce cadres. The primary outcomes of interest will be health outcomes, financial risk protection and user satisfaction. In addition, secondary outcomes of interest the attainment of health system objectives of improved equity, efficiency, effectiveness and responsiveness. We will search relevant databases of published and grey literature as well as clinical trials registries from 1990 onwards without language restrictions. Two review authors will screen references, extract data and perform risk of bias assessment independently. Contingent on the heterogeneity of the collated literature, we will either perform a meta-analysis or a narrative synthesis of the collated data. Ethics and dissemination: The systematic review will aim to inform policy makers, investors, health professionals, technologists and educators about the existing evidence, potential gaps in literature and the impact of eLearning for health leadership and management capacity building on health system outcomes. We will disseminate the review findings by publishing it as a peer-review journal manuscript and conference abstracts. Trial registration number: PROSPERO CRD42017056998 STRENGTHS AND LIMITATIONS OF THIS STUDY • We will perform a systematic review of the literature on the use of eLearning (i.e. use of digital technology in education) for health leadership and management in healthcare. • We will follow the “gold standard” Cochrane systematic review methodology and perform a comprehensive search of a range of relevant databases, robust data extraction, risk of bias and quality assessment and a meta-analysis of the outcome data. • In case of a limited number of eligible studies, our review will serve to highlight the evidence gaps and provide detailed recommendations for future research studies.