¶ … Management in Practice in Health Care Settings The Benefits of IT-based Knowledge Management Systems

The delivery of quality health care and the process quality can be significantly impacted by the adoption of information technology in healthcare for the recording, management and use of knowledge developed on an everyday basis.

In recent times, the management of knowledge through the information and technology has been introduced in many health care settings. There have been many research and studies in ascertaining the measureable effect of the use of information technology for management of knowledge. Such studies have specifically stressed on the qualitative changes in health care and treatment delivery after adoption of the knowledge management process. The studies also stress on the importance of the use of information and technology for recording and documentation of information that can serve as knowledge in health care settings (Goossen, 1996).

Such documentation includes information related to time needed and expended for tasks assigned, levels of user satisfaction and patient outcome. While the documentation process also increases the workload on a nurse in a hospital setting, it is essential for creation of knowledge and better utilization of the knowledge in order to deliver increased quality of care health planning.

There are several roles and duties that nurses have to undergo in a hospital setting. These include duties and roles like the core tasks, order entry and scheduling, documentation, ward management, dispensing and monitoring medication usage and communication to other professionals.

The use of the information systems and technology for nurses are being adopted to allow the nurses to better conduct their daily roles and responsibilities ('Big data and the future of nursing knowledge', 2015). Such information systems, the basis for the knowledge management systems, can be stand alone systems or function in conjunction with other information systems in a hospital setting.

In this context the process of knowledge management and analysis can be defined as the process of generating, storing, analysis and manipulation and the effective communication data that are related to patient and patient care within a health organization.

The Benefits of IT-based Knowledge Management Systems

There have been significant changes in the way health care is delivered in the last few years. In order to serve patients' needs, there has been growth and evolution of nursing informatics to address the changing requirements of the health care delivery mechanism. One of the major developments in recent times has been the development of resource management through the better management of the knowledge that is available in a health care setting. This has also raised the importance of management of the knowledge that is created every day in hospitals and other health care settings in order to disseminate the knowledge to better undertake delivery of health care.

Adoption of knowledge management through computer based information technology systems enables health care organizations to engage in data mining. This helps organizations to capture and store large amounts of data on a daily basis. The information that is gathered is too cumbersome and heavy for manual sorting and analysis. Even if it is possible, such manual sorting, selection, analysis and compilation may take a lot of time which can be critical in a health care organization in hospital setting. Knowledge management using modern technological support can help gather, store and analyze and make available for use, the knowledge that is created and gathered on a daily basis. This increases speed of delivery of the analyzed knowledge available for nurses and other health care personnel. This in turn affects the speed of delivery of health care in a hospital setting (Ammenwerth, Rauchegger, Ehlers, Hirsch & Schaubmayr, 2011).

It is now widely recognized that nurses are the key decision makers in the health care and delivery system. Therefore it is critical that the nurses take the most appropriate decision and this can be improved to a great extent as the nurse take recourse to and consult the best available evidence that is at their disposal. Knowledge management, aided by information and technology-based frameworks, helps nurses to quickly take effective and efficient decisions. Nurses can fall back on past instances and refer to similar cases and medical situations and consult the decisions that were taken and the results of the decisions from a knowledge management system. Therefore the decision would be taken with the condition of the patient and with the intention for recovery and appropriate care of the patient.

Nurses can avail knowledge and expertise from knowledge that is documented in the knowledge management computer based information and technology system. A critical analysis of the previous experiences undertaken by other members of the health care organization can be critical for a nurse to take...

Often such decisions are the ones that help administer the primary care to patient and often prove to be critical in acute situations. Hence it can be said that the process of knowledge management helps nurses in decision making which in turn directly affects a patient and their relatives.
A proper and effective knowledge management system and analysis of the knowledge created on a regular basis can help health care personnel to better organize and utilize the resources available. Knowledge repositories can hold detailed information about various resources including human resources. In situations where health care professionals, including nurses, have to take decisions about use of the resources on a priority basis, a computer-based knowledge management system can quickly and effectively present the options available and help professionals take decisions (Qiu & Yu, 2007). In health care settings where there is a shortage of resources, especially human resources, knowledge management process can help make assessment of the workload on individuals and department asn and allocate resources to best suit the objective of the organization (Ammenwerth, Rauchegger, Ehlers, Hirsch & Schaubmayr, 2011). This decision making is aided by an efficient knowledge management system that has the records and status of all the resources that are available.

Knowledge management also helps in creating a basis for evaluation of the care delivery system based on patient outcomes. The process of daily documentation, an essential component of any knowledge management process, helps input regular information about medical process and their expected and actual outcomes. Using advanced technology this information can be analyzed and presented in the form of data for comparison and benchmark creation. This benchmark can act a threshold parameter for evaluation of the quality and outcome of health care delivery (Conrad & Sherrod, 2011). Therefore proper and efficient evaluation of health care quality can be made possible by adoption of knowledge management and analysis process of the knowledge that is created on a regular basis.

With the every changing technologies and diagnostic and treatment procedures for patients, health care organizations and professionals too requires to keep pace with the changes. This also entails acquiring of skills and knowledge. This can be provided through effective training. An effective and efficient training program can be developed by the analysis of the present level of knowledge within the organization. Authorities can therefore ascertain the knowledge and the sills that nurses and other health care professional need to acquire and design training programs accordingly.

Knowledge management and analysis using information technology can help make assessments of the patient satisfaction. The information, from the patient's perspective can be input into the knowledge management systems and an analysis using computer-based technology can help delivery measureable data about the level of patient satisfaction. it needs to be noted that patient satisfaction is essentially a qualitative matrix and hence a quantitative assessment of the same can be very helpful to health care organizations as well as nurses to estimate the success of health care delivery (Thompson, 2004).

Conclusion

The role of nurses in the delivery of quality health care is being recognized the world over. Medical world recognizes the importance of the decisions that nurses take especially in acute and critical settings.

There is also a growing recognition of the role and importance of the management of the knowledge that exists within a health care organization. Health care organizations are adopting the computer based information technology system to better gather, document, analyze and distribute knowledge that is created on a regular basis.

The most important role of knowledge management for nurses is to help and aid in taking decisions which often prove to be critical especially in acute conditions. Consulting earlier decisions taken in similar circumstances and conditions with a view of the results of such decisions helps them decide the best course of action.

Knowledge management also helps health care organizations to evaluate health care delivery, measure patient satisfaction, develop efficient training programs for skill and knowledge development and enable efficient and adequate allocations of resources.