Merger of knowledge management and information technology in healthcare: Opportunities and challenges

In the last 10 years, the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) revolution has redefined the structure of the 21st century healthcare organization. It is clear that the 21st century healthcare organization will bring about new healthcare services and that traditional management and technological concepts would not be the appropriate conduit for disseminating these new healthcare services. The fundamental challenge faced by the 21st century clinical practitioner is to acquire proficiency in understanding and interpreting clinical information so as to attain knowledge and wisdom. An additional challenge that must be considered is that clinical practitioners make potentially life-saving decisions whilst attempting to deal with large amounts of clinical data. We focus on the emergence of telehealth as an alternative implementation for transfer of medical information using futuristic Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). We contend that current healthcare applications are being used in a static manner; futuristic applications will need to be dynamic in nature and would call for the transfer of context-based healthcare information. A Knowledge Management (KM) solution would allow healthcare institutions to give clinical data context, so as to allow knowledge derivation for more effective clinical diagnosis. It would also provide a mechanism for effective transfer of the acquired knowledge in order to aid healthcare workers as and when required. Using data inputs from our collaborating organization, Applied Network Solutions (ANS), we argue that healthcare institutions that integrate KM and ICT into their main organizational processes are more likely to survive and prosper. These organizations would have a profound understanding of how to use clinical information for creating value in tangible and intangible terms.