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The purpose of this paper is to investigate service-oriented architecture organizational studies (SOA OS) in healthcare through a rigorous literature review, development and testing in an eGovernment health-care setting. The application of SOA paradigm to integrate information systems has been pursued mainly by private organizations. However, SOA starts to appear in the public agenda and specifically in health-care reengineering, as well. Recently, government strategies for eHealth have been slowly incorporating the SOA paradigm to integrate isolated systems, provide cost-effective solutions and expand the capabilities of their health-care information system. Yet, literature indicates that eHealth government strategies, including SOA, require the support of SOA OS to be successfully implemented.

To investigate the less acknowledged phenomena like SOA OS in healthcare, the authors incorporate an interpretive, qualitative case study approach to conduct this research. This method will assist in examining the phenomenon in its natural setting, examine the in-depth complexities and health-care processes and provide rich qualitative data during interviews and observations.

The authors critically review the literature and synthesize a SOA OS with specific attributes, sub-elements, guidelines and healthcare-specific parameters. This conceptual structure was tested in the practical arena leading to an evaluated SOA OS blueprint.

As the outcome of the research was based on a single case, the paper concludes that the SOA OS in health-care research needs to broaden its perspective with more empirical data.

This research revealed empirical insights that can help practitioners and researchers focus their attention to the significant role that the SOA OS plays during SOA implementations.

This paper focuses on critical success factors related to SOA implementations in health-care organizations and can be considered as novel as it identifies and structures a SOA OS element that can be part of a SOA governance approach in the area of healthcare.

Service oriented architecture (SOA) is increasingly adopted by many sectors, including healthcare. Due to the nature of healthcare systems, there is a need to increase SOA adoption success rates as the non‐integrated nature of healthcare systems is responsible for medical errors that cause the loss of tens of thousands of patients per year. Although numerous factors affect SOA success, these have not been explored and analysed yet, especially in the area of healthcare. This highlights a literature void and thus the purpose of this paper is to identify critical success factors (CSFs) influencing SOA implementation in healthcare.

The authors critically review the literature and identify individual factors that may form CSFs for SOA implementation in healthcare. In doing so, they synthesise and propose a conceptual model of SOA CSFs in healthcare. The conceptual model is tested in the practical arena using a qualitative research methodology that is based on a case study strategy.

The empirical findings verify the proposed model and reveal that an additional SOA CSF in healthcare does exist. It is also revealed that the proposed model helped the case organization to successfully implement an SOA solution.

The implications that derive from this article are important for both theory and practice. At a practical level, the paper delivers a model that can be used as a decision‐making tool by professionals when they implement SOA solutions in healthcare. At a theoretical level, the proposed model extends the body of knowledge on this area and opens new avenues for research. From another point of view, it is suggested that further research is required on this area as the proposed conceptual model was tested only through a single case study. Thus, multiple case studies or other types of research strategies should be used to better test the proposed model.

This work is original and focuses on CSFs related to SOA implementations in healthcare organizations. The work can be considered as novel as it identifies and classifies SOA CSFs for solutions that have been developed in the area of healthcare.