Managing Mobile Healthcare Knowledge: Physicians' Perceptions on Knowledge Creation and Reuse

Managing Mobile Healthcare Knowledge: Physicians' Perceptions on Knowledge Creation and Reuse

Teppo Räisänen, Harri Oinas-Kukkonen, Katja Leiviskä, Matti Seppänen, Markku Kallio
Copyright: © 2009 |Pages: 17
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-332-6.ch006
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Abstract

Incorporating healthcare information systems into clinical settings has been shown to reduce medication errors and improve the quality of work in general by improving medical decision making and by saving time. This chapter aims to demonstrate that mobile healthcare information system may also help physicians to communicate and collaborate as well as learn and share their experiences within their work community. Physicians’ usage of a mobile system is analyzed through a knowledge management framework known as the 7C model. The data was collected through the Internet among all of the 352 users of the mobile system. The results indicate that frequent use of the system seemed to improve individual physicians’ knowledge work as well as the collective intelligence of a work community. The guide for acute care, evidence-based medicine guidelines and information related to drug interactions supported the knowledge creation to a large extent. As such, mobile healthcare information systems may be capable of supporting the different sub-processes of knowledge creation and the knowledge work of individual physicians, and through this also improving the collective intelligence of the work community. Overall, knowledge management seems to be a prominent approach for studying healthcare information systems and their impact on the work of physicians.
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Background

Systematic processing of health-related data, information and knowledge focusing on the study of information processing principles and solutions in healthcare is referred to as health informatics, while the scientific discipline related to it is called medical informatics (Hasman et al., 1995). The terms are often used synonymously, even though some differences exist in their use between countries. For instance, medical informatics in Germany also includes nursing informatics and dental informatics, while in other countries medical informatics primarily focuses on solutions from the physicians’ viewpoint (Hasman et al., 1996). In general, health informatics is often examined from different perspectives such as information technology or user needs.

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