Healthcare Knowledge Management

Healthcare practitioners and managers increasingly find themselves in clinical situations where they have to think fast and process myriad diagnostic test results, medications and past treatment responses in order to make decisions. Effective problem solving in the clinical environment or classroom simulated lab depends on a healthcare professional's immediate access to fresh information. Unable to consult a library for information, the healthcare practitioner must learn to effectively manage knowledge while thinking on their toes.

Knowledge Management (KM) holds the key to this dilemma in the healthcare environment. KM places value on the tacit knowledge that individuals hold within an institution and often makes use of IT to free up the collective wisdom of individuals within an organization. Healthcare Knowledge Management: Issues, Advances and Successes will explore the nature of KM within contemporary healthcare institutions and associated organizations. It will provide readers with an understanding of approaches to the critical nature and use of knowledge by investigating healthcare-based KM systems. Designed to demystify the KM process and demonstrate its applicability in healthcare, this text offers contemporary and clinically-relevant lessons for future organizational implementations.

The editors of this book have assembled a group of international contributors that reflects the diversity of KM applications in the healthcare sector. While many KM texts suffer from pitching theoretical issues at too technical a level, Healthcare Knowledge Management approaches the topic from the more versatile "twin" perspectives of both academia and commerce. This unique text is integrative in nature – a practical guide to managing and developing KM that is underpinned by theory and research.