Abstract

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.

Author Keywords: Knowledge management; Technical infrastructure; Management system

Article Outline

1. Introduction

2. Background

2.1. Knowledge management

2.2. Health care management

2.3. Benefits of the integration

2.4. Contribution of the research

3. Knowledge management environment

3.1. Knowledge management processes

3.2. Knowledge management capabilities

4. E-health

5. Proactive knowledge based decision-support

6. Health care management system interface

7. Future research

8. Conclusion

References