Does health care for systemic development?

Abstract

The paper critically evaluates systems approaches to knowledge management to identify if health care professionals value systemic development. Research in knowledge management and health informatics is reviewed to see if multiple systems perspectives exist, and if and how concepts from multiple systems perspectives are integrated, or ‘swept in’ to a complex whole. The first finding is that knowledge management strategies in health do ‘sweep in’ insights from three systems perspectives: personal learning (knowledge creation); communities of practice (knowledge normalization) and the exercise of technical expertise and technology (knowledge application). The second finding is that health knowledge management has an architecture that does promote systemic development. An empirical case example of systemic intervention by an executive team is discussed in terms of micro evolution in social ecology. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Beyond KOL management: Communities of practice as a new perspective on pharmaceutical market penetration

“…17 Similarly, Communities of Practices have been used to explain coordination in fastresponse services 18 and identifi ed as the nexus of uncertainty in the management of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. 19 They have been used to explore the mechanism of systemic development among health-care professionals 20 and to explain the adoption of electronic health records. 21 None of these pieces of work concerns the adoption on new pharmaceutical therapies, but all do relate to the acceptance or diffusion of ideas within a health-care environment.…”