Knowledge Management for Effective Clinical Diagnosis in Developing Countries

Abstract

In the last two decades, the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) revolution has redefined the structure of the 21st century healthcare organization. The fundamental challenge faced by the 21st century clinical practitioner in a developing country is to acquire proficiency in understanding and interpreting clinical information so as to update knowledge that leverage the quality of decisions made at the clinics. An additional challenge must be considered by the clinical practitioners to make potentially life-saving decisions whilst attempting to deal with large amounts of clinical data. Since the Clinical Knowledge Management Systems (CKMS) consist of most related Data, Information and Knowledge, it could be utilized to achieve the above challenges. Shortage of medical experts in Health Institutions located in rural and remote areas in developing countries being a huge problem which effects badly to the quality of healthcare. By providing facilities for medical practitioners to access KMS, this problem can be alleviated substantially. 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. This study has identified the factors that affect to the knowledge management initiatives. There is a strong association between accessing and using Information/knowledge in clinical activities and quality of healthcare. Moreover, attitudes of Medical Practitioners (MP), Infrastructure facilities, patient Information systems, patient treatment, staff benefits etc., have shown positive effect to the success of Knowledge Management in Health Institutions. The research has used a case study methodology for accomplishing the research objectives. Rural and remote areas in Sri Lanka have been considered for the case study since it is one of the developing countries situated in the Asian region. Based on the outcome of the study, we introduce a KM framework for Healthcare Institutions which would assist HIs to discover and create new knowledge. The framework has been validated using a sample of 15 hospitals situated in the Kandy district in Sri Lanka.