Knowledge Cycles and Sharing

Healthcare organizations have the same problem as any other organization that is run by sentient but mentally isolated beings. It is a problem that comes out of constructivist thinking and relates to the ability of people, once they start to communicate, to share knowledge. The popular knowledge management paradigm argues the importance of knowledge to management processes and organizational health. It may be said that it is likely that this paradigm will in due course give way to the “intelligent organization” paradigm that addresses how knowledge can be used intelligently for the viability of the organization. Part of the knowledge management paradigm centers on the use of knowledge sharing. This takes the view that while knowledge is necessary for people to do their jobs competently, there is also a need to have the potential for easy access to the knowledge of others. This chapter centers on the capacity of organizations to know what knowledge they have and to coordinate this knowledge.

It's High Time for Application Frameworks for Healthcare

This chapter discusses the impact of adopting application frameworks in the healthcare (HC) domain. It argues the shortcomings of existing HC applications and systems, examines the benefits of application frameworks use during and after the software development, and presents such an application framework. The authors hope that this chapter will put on the table the discussion about the necessity of application frameworks in HC because they strongly believe that the software industry can tremendously benefit from the work done so far in the area of the HC standardization, in order to provide HC-specific application frameworks that will make software development easier and more efficient.

Social Capital, An Important Ingredient to Effective Knowledge Sharing

This chapter introduces social capital as a concept useful in identifying the ingredients necessary for knowledge sharing in Healthcare. Social capital is defined and its importance as a concept for identifying the conditions necessary for knowledge exchange is discussed. Furthermore the introduction of an online database and tutorial system (Meditute) is presented as a case study to highlight the importance of social capital where information systems are used in the sharing process. The authors anticipate that the use of social capital to analyse knowledge sharing initiatives will lead to more holistic approaches. Such approaches will inform both researchers and managers as to the many factors that affect knowledge sharing.

An Overview of Efforts to Bring Clinical Knowledge to the Point of Care

By bringing people the right information in the right format at the right time and place, state of the art clinical information systems with imbedded clinical knowledge can help people make the right clinical decisions. This chapter provides an overview of the efforts to develop systems capable of delivering such information at the point of care. The first section focuses on “library-type” applications that enable a clinician to look-up information in an electronic document. The second section describes a myriad of “real-time clinical decision support systems.” These systems generally deliver clinical guidance at the point of care within the clinical information system (CIS). The third section describes several “hybrid” systems, which combine aspects of real-time clinical decision support systems with library-type information. Finally, section four provides a brief look at various attempts to bring clinical knowledge, in the form of computable guidelines, to the point of care.be sufficiently expressive to explicitly capture the design rational (process and outcome intentions) of the guideline’s author, while leaving flexibility at application time to the attending physician and their own preferred methods.” (Shahar, 2001)

The Challenge of Privacy and Security and the Implementation of Health Knowledge Management Systems

Health information privacy is one of the most important and contentious areas in the development of Health Knowledge Systems. This chapter provides an overview of some of the daily privacy and security issues currently faced by health services, as health knowledge system developments risk outpacing medico-legal and professional structures. The focus is a mixture of philosophy and pragmatics with regard to the key “privacy” and “security” issues that challenge stakeholders as they try to implement and maintain an increasing array of electronic health knowledge management systems. The chapter utilises a number of evolving simple visual and mnemonic models or concepts based on observations, reflections and understanding of the literature.

Issues in Clinical Knowledge Management

The objective of this chapter is to examine some of the key issues surrounding the incorporation of the Knowledge Management (KM) paradigm in healthcare. We discuss whether it would it be beneficial for healthcare organizations to adopt the KM paradigm so as to facilitate effective decision-making in the context of healthcare delivery. Alternative healthcare management concepts with respect to their ability in providing a solution to the above-mentioned issue are reviewed. This chapter concludes that the KM paradigm can transform the healthcare sector.

Biomedical Image Registration for Diagnostic Decision Making and Treatment Monitoring

The chapter introduces biomedical image registration as a means of integrating and providing complementary and additional information from multiple medical images simultaneously to facilitate diagnostic decision-making and treatment monitoring. It focuses on the fundamental theories of biomedical image registration, major methodologies and contributions of this area, and the main applications of biomedical image registration in clinical contexts. Furthermore, discussions on the future challenges and possible research trends of this field are presented. The chapter aims to assist in a quick understanding of main methods and technologies, current issues, and major applications of biomedical image registration, to provide the connection between biomedical image registration and the related research areas, and finally to evoke novel and practical registration methods to improve the quality and safety of healthcare.

Towards Knowledge Intensive Inter-Organizational Systems in Healthcare

The aim of this chapter is to share recent findings and understanding on how information systems can be better adopted to support new ways of work and improve productivity in public funded healthcare. The limits of transferring explicit and tacit knowledge are discussed and moreover, the chapter elaborates barriers to the widespread use of knowledge management tools among clinicians. The impacts of an inter-organizational system used for remote consultation between secondary and primary care providers are examined. Furthermore, the authors suggest that issues related to clinical knowledge management such as the varying information and knowledge processing needs of clinicians from various medical expertise domains should be examined carefully when developing new clinical information systems.

Organizing for Knowledge Management

The Cancer Information Service is a knowledge management organization, charged with delivering information to the public concerning cancer. This chapter describes how societal trends in consumer/client information behavior impact clinical knowledge management. It then details how the CIS is organized to serve clients and how it can interface with clinical practice by providing referral, by enhancing health literacy, by providing a second opinion, and by giving crucial background, assurance to clients from neutral third party. The CIS serves as a critical knowledge broker, synthesizing and translating information for clients before, during, and after their interactions with clinical practices; thus enabling health professionals to focus on their unique functions.

Feasibility of Joint Working in Exchange and Sharing of Caller Information Between Ambulance, Fire and Police Services of Barfordshire

This was a practical intervention in the UK, the objective of which was to undertake an examination of the current arrangements between Barfordshire Fire, Police and Ambulance Services for the sharing and exchange of caller information, taking into account technological potential and constraints, organisational issues, and geographical factors. The process followed was highly participative. The initial event was an open space session followed by later sessions exploring information technologyand human resource issues. For these two later events, interactive planning and critical systems heuristics were used. The most important outcome was that, whilst the extent to which the five organisations involved shared information and knowledge was very variable, there were no perceived barriers to this happening. Such sharing, despite considerable structural and cultural barriers, was seen to be feasible both organisationally and technically. The study further highlighted a need to more closely integrate operational and strategic planning in this area and to make more explicit use of known and tested methodologies to better enable participative dialogue.