Week One Discussion
The classic one-line definition of Knowledge Management (KM) was offered up by Tom Davenport early on (Davenport, 1994): “Knowledge Management is the process of capturing, distributing, and effectively using knowledge.” Probably no better or more succinct single-line definition has appeared since.
Taking into account this week’s readings, videos, and Davenport’s definition of KM, share an example of how KM applies to health care? Using your own example, consider Gray and Gray’s five principles of KM.
How well does your organization or an organization that you are familiar with performs on the five principles?
Your initial post should be 300-500 words and must include at least two scholarly references: Enclosed in quotation marks and cited in-line
Week Two Discussion: KM in Healthcare
Hands-on: Exploring healthcare data
As you begin an exploration of knowledge management in healthcare, it may be useful to remind ourselves of the various types and forms of healthcare data generated and collected on a day-to-day basis. These data, after all, comprise the raw materials of healthcare knowledge, which healthcare providers and organizations hope to develop and deploy to improve healthcare delivery.
First, let’s do a quick review of the sorts of data typically collected during outpatient visits. To do this, we’ll do a bit of exploring in the record of a fictional patient stored in an online demo for an open source EHR, OpenMRS. Proceed as follows:
- First, point your browser to the OpenMRS Demo page: https://openmrs.org/demo/
- Click on the button title “Explore the standard OpenMRS installation”.
- Before clicking on the button to Launch the OpenMRS 2.0 Demo, make a note of the username and password required to log in.
- Before entering the login credentials, click on Outpatient Clinic in the location list. Then proceed with logging in.
- When the Outpatient Clinic menu appears, click on Find Patient.
- Enter a patient name in the search field. George Miller is a good choice. Then follow the link that appears to view George’s record.
Spend time exploring George’s record. Note the list of diagnoses, also known as the problem list. Review some recent visits and take a look at the notes and vital signs recorded for George’s past visits.
Your post should consider ways in which the information contained in this and lots of other EHRs might be leveraged to improve the quality and efficiency of healthcare delivery.
Week Three Discussion: Knowledge, Outcomes and Cost
It is important to understand the impact that knowledge has, or should or could have, on management decision-making. It is also important to understand how knowledge can be used to improve healthcare. Read Part 3 from Gray and Gray. For this discussion, consider how knowledge can improve healthcare by describing the relationship between knowledge, outcome improvement, and cost reduction.
Provide a concrete example of the relationship in action
Provide at least one course and one non-course, scholarly (peer reviewed) reference.