Co-developing Canadian hospital research tracking criteria: Findings from a National Consensus Building Meeting using the nominal group technique

A Learning Health System (LHS) requires the systematic integration of research within clinical care to accelerate evidence generation and implementation. In Canada, where most hospitals are community hospitals, many lack the infrastructure and resources needed to participate meaningfully in research, limiting progress toward a national LHS. To better understand and track the hospital research landscape, we hosted a one-day, in-person consensus meeting to identify key indicators for monitoring Canadian hospital research infrastructure and productivity. The meeting employed the Nominal Group Technique, which included five steps: context setting, brainstorming, clustering, naming, and resolving. The meeting convened 51 attendees, including clinicians, researchers, and health system leaders representing 50 organizations across eight provinces. Prioritized research infrastructure metric domains included research personnel, organizational supports, and finances. Prioritized research productivity metric domains included research activity, adoption and uptake of evidence, dissemination, and finances. Attendees also identified four domains as important to track for both infrastructure and productivity: research personnel, training and mentorship, finances, and collaborations/partnerships. Discussions highlighted points of tension between prioritizing academically oriented metrics and those reflecting community-centered priorities, as well as challenges related to implementation and feasibility, including administrative burden and data availability. These findings underscore the importance of balancing local context with national transferability and the need to leverage existing data systems to reduce reporting burden. Overall, this meeting and its findings represent a foundational step toward developing a coordinated, national approach to tracking hospital-based research infrastructure and productivity in Canada, supporting broader progress toward an equitable and inclusive LHS. • Consensus meeting unified Canadian clinicians, researchers, patient partners, and health systems leaders • Key infrastructural metric domains: research personnel, organizational supports, finances • Key productivity metric domains: research activity, uptake of evidence, dissemination, finances • Integration of infrastructure and productivity metrics to assess research capacity • Feasibility challenges and metric divergences across academic and community settings