Knowledge management practices in healthcare services

Abstract

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/ authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. SummaryPurpose -The purpose of the study is to develop understanding about the role of information and knowledge in healthcare processes and thereby create a basis for practices that would better support the actual service provision. This paper seeks to model and analyze the service processes of two case settings: laboratory and radiology units of a Finnish regional healthcare system. Design/methodology/approach -The main actors, their knowledge needs, current knowledge practices and bottlenecks in knowledge flows were recognized. The paper combines conceptual analysis and empirical findings. The empirical data were collected in the autumn of 2010 and consist of 32 thematic interviews in two units of a healthcare organization in Finland. The themes of the interviews are related to current knowledge practices and processes.Findings -The paper exemplifies an approach that provides a systematic basis for analyzing different aspects of knowledge management in healthcare processes. The approach provides valuable insights for analyzing knowledge-based foundations of health services and it is expected that this analysis helps elaborate the practical knowledge processes of healthcare organizations.Originality/value -The paper approaches health information management from the viewpoint of knowledge management discourse and highlights the importance of knowledge-based value creation. Instead of mere information transfer or delivery the paper emphasizes the knowledge-in-use perspective. Despite the essential role of knowledge assets, the development efforts have mainly concentrated on solving local problems with context specific technical solutions.

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