Inquiring Knowledge Management Systems - A Chinese Medicine Perspective

Information Systems/Information Technology (IS/IT) can facilitate superior healthcare delivery. However, studies of IS/IT systems and implementations for Chinese Medicine (CM) practice are very limited. We analyze different inquiring systems and identify that CM can be more easily mapped as a combination of Hegelian and Kantian inquiring systems where multiple perspectives and facts as inputs are considered and analyzed in complicated tasks. These two inquiring systems also have characteristics to cater for formal data analysis but the outcome or solution maybe individual and/or non-predefined. This is important in the context of CM and provides the platform for CM's individual prescriptions for the same disease in different patients. From this perspective, we explore how IS/IT might be used to support the delivery of CM clinics in their daily operations. This research uses a mixed research method to study a case clinic in the context of CM clinical medicine management system.