Health care informatics

From NursingWiki

Much has been written about the topic of knowledge management across industries, but the use of knowledge and information to drive out costs in healthcare environments has not yet come of age.

Tom Davenport and John Glaser wrote an insightful article in Harvard Business Review’s Managing Healthcare publication entitled “Just-in-Time Delivery Comes to Knowledge Management.” In this article they speak about the constantly changing knowledge about diseases, syndromes, medications, lab tests and additions to biomedical literature. They propose that the ability for a healthcare provider to stay on top of even a fraction of the information generated is a dubious task. They discussed an example of a real-time knowledge-based order-entry, referral and event detection system and a study at Mass General and Brigham and Women’s that found serious errors were reduced by 55% with the use of an integrated on-line order-entry system and an effective clinical knowledge management system.

Back in the early days of “knowledge management” many industries were slow to adopt its advantages due to implementation costs. Now that success has been shown in areas of decision support, benchmarking statistics, and reducing costs, the benefits are clear. Today, some healthcare facilities are migrating toward electronic health records, order entry, and real-time medication adverse drug event notifications.

To achieve successful Just-in-Time knowledge management solutions, the right people, the right technology and the right knowledge is essential.