The Role for Knowledge Management in Modern Healthcare Delivery

Abstract

As medical science advances and the applications of information and communications technologies (ICTs) to healthcare operations diffuse more data, information begins to permeate healthcare databases and repositories. However, given the voluminous nature of these disparate data assets, it is no longer possible for healthcare providers to process these data without the aid of sophisticated tools and technologies. The goal of knowledge management is to provide the decision maker with appropriate tools, technologies, strategies and processes to turn data and information into valuable knowledge assets. This paper discusses the benefits of incorporating these tools and techniques to the healthcare arena in order to make healthcare delivery more effective and efficient. To ensure a successful knowledge management initiative in a healthcare setting, the paper proffers the knowledge management infrastructure (KMI) framework and intelligence continuum (IC) model. The benefits of these techniques lie not only in the ability of making explicit the elements of these knowledge assets, and in so doing enable their full potential to be realized, but also to provide a systematic and robust approach to structuring the conceptualization of knowledge assets.