The Establishment of Communities of Practice for Electronic Medicines Management.

Abstract

Digital medicines management is a high priority in Norwegian e-health strategies. A key challenge is the existence of multiple electronic information sources and systems, which require multi-professional cooperation. Lack of communication, understanding and collaboration between pharmacies, hospitals and community caregivers is also a challenge. Communities of practices (CoPs) have been used to establish arenas for discussing issues challenging the workflow to reach a common agreement on successful work practices for electronic medicines management. The purpose of this paper is to explore: How can we establish communities of practice (CoPs) to gather new knowledge on the facilitators and challenges for electronic medicines management practices in Norway? The results show engagement in establishing the CoPs and a willingness for joint enterprise. The establishment of the CoPs was performed simply based on established forms of collaboration. For CoPs to be effective, established alliances need to be expanded and renewed to form new group dynamics and thus a basis for new knowledge about electronic medicines management.