Factors influencing the success of knowledge management process in health care organisations: a literature review.

Abstract

Knowledge is a strategic resource in health care organisations and knowledge management (KM) is applied as an effective solution to overcome challenges, such as rising health care cost and increasing demands for improving quality of care. The aim of this review was to identify factors influencing the success of KM process in health care organisations of developed and developing countries. This review was conducted in 2018. The sources used for searching relevant papers were PubMed, Scopus, Science Direct, Web of Knowledge, EMBASE and Google Scholar, and the time frame was between 1980 and 2017. The search terms were KM, health care services administration, health care organisation, hospital and clinic which were combined by using AND/OR Boolean operators. In this review, 13 papers were included. The main success factors influencing KM implementation in health care organisations were organisational culture, information technology, organisational structure, and performance evaluation and measurement. In developed countries, organisational culture was the most frequent factor, while in developing countries, organisational culture and information technology were the most frequent ones. It seems that in developed and developing countries, organisational factors are the most frequent factors influencing successful KM in health care organisations.