Developing a Knowledge Strategy for Medical Humanitarian Crises: A Case Study of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), Switzerland

Medecins Sans Frontieres, (MSF) an independent, medical humanitarian organization has been lauded for its heroic efforts to respond to the Ebola crisis which began in March 2014 in West Africa. Yet as a recent report it published in March 2015, MSF was pushed to the limits and beyond. This paper discusses the results of research on knowledge and information requirements in a humanitarian organization currently being undertaken by MSF, Switzerland. It highlights the challenges the organization faces to collect, synthesize and disseminate accurate data and information. One of the crucial issues in responding to the recent Ebola crisis was an absence of up-to-date accurate information and data to be used at headquarters and in field missions by volunteers during this highly volatile, complex health crisis which caused the death of 10,000 people including some 500 health workers in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Over a period of 12 months, 1,300 MSF international staff and 4,000 local staff were deployed in West Africa where they provided medical services for approximately 5,000 Ebola patients. Knowledge and expertise are essential resources for MSF which delivers emergency aid to people affected by armed conflict, epidemics, as it is for other humanitarian organizations. MSF leadership is currently reviewing its processes, organizational structure and organizational culture to explore how the sharing of knowledge and lessons learned can be improved with the overall goal of saving more lives in crises such as the Ebola epidemic. This review is being undertaken with the assistance of two academic institutions in Switzerland. A recent MSF report on the Ebola crisis: Pushed to the Limit and Beyond: a year into the largest ever Ebola outbreak, provides a critical analysis of the global Ebola response, highlighting "how inefficient and slow health and aid systems are to respond to emergencies" (MSF, 2015). This report does not provide a definitive conclusion to what went wrong but it does provide reflections on the key challenges from the perspective of MSF experts who were involved in the crisis. It notes that there was little information or knowledge shared between countries affected by the crisis. Health officials in the countries affected mostly relied on the World Health Organization (WHO) to act as liaison between them and this approach proved to be largely inadequate. Cooperation and collaboration amongst agencies is often mentioned as a crucial problem in crisis management as it is for other humanitarian organizations. Recognizing that effective knowledge strategy is essential for rapid and informed response to crises, MSF launched a knowledge management (KM) research project in 2013 and decided to seek assistance from two academic institutions, the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, EPFL) and the Haute Ecole de Gestion de Geneve, (Geneva School of Business Administration, HEG). The EPFL developed a technological solution for content, process and system management, while the HEG primarily addressed content management issues, governance and collaboration. There were clear benefits for both parties: the students gained experience on implementing knowledge management practices within an institution and MSF benefitted from a research perspective and an external point of view. This paper describes the projects, their objectives, methods, outcomes and the interaction with MSF staff and management.