Knowledge management-enabled health care management systems: capabilities, infrastructure, and decision-support

The health care industry is increasingly becoming a knowledge-based community that is connected to hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, and customers for sharing knowledge, reducing administrative costs and improving the quality of care. Thus, the success of health care depends critically on the collection, analysis and seamless exchange of clinical, billing, and utilization information or knowledge within and across the above organizational boundaries. This research envisions a knowledge management-enabled health care management system that would help integrate clinical, administrative, and financial processes in health care through a common technical architecture; and provides a decision support infrastructure for clinical and administrative decision-making. Hence, the objective of this research is to present and describe the knowledge management capabilities, the technical infrastructure, and the decision support architecture for such a health care management system. The research findings would immensely help the health care information technology (IT) managers and knowledge based system developers to identify their IT needs and to plan for and develop the technical infrastructure of the health care management system for their organizations. q 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.