GLIS 661 : Information and Knowledge Management : Digital Access Regar
Answer:
Dallah Hospital is one of those hospitalswhere quality counts while they serve medical care to their patients by providing them comfortable and convenient environment, major focus is on giving up-to-date medical service to improve the health of the societies (Dallah Hospital, 2018). But providing such high level services is not an easy task, by discussing the features of information and knowledge management and relating them with the services provided by the Dallah Hospital will help in giving a glimpse how information and knowledge management is playing vital role. Features are as follows:
- First feature of information and knowledge management is that it haves a separate search engine which is necessary because the knowledge is in very large numbers in any organization and it keeps on increasing as new knowledge is added on with time, it gets difficult to find right information at the right time (McGuire, 2015). Dallah Hospital provides a search engine through their website (https://www.dallah-hospital.com) on which at the top is a search bar from which the patients or the visitors of the website can search different keywords. For instance; if you type “cough and cold” the information related with it will be displayed, this helps in spreading information.
- Second feature is that it is very simple in context of its accessibility and use because organizations are needed to update knowledge through different sources, so simple operations caters quick knowledge addition and also ease for the stakeholders in accessing as everyone do not possess best computer skills (Talamo and Bonanomi, 2015). InDallah Hospital the simplicity in adding and using the information and knowledge can be fruitful for all the doctors, management, patients, and their closed ones. For instance; if a new doctor joins and the patient was getting treatment from other doctor earlier, then the new doctor can access the information regarding the patient history and provide better treatment.
- Third feature is accessibility for everyone as information and knowledge cannot be bound into limiting its access and use for the stakeholders as it is the duty of organizations to provide accurate information to its stakeholders in order to maintain fair continuity in their operations (Garfield, 2014). In Dallah Hospital if the information is accessible to all, then it will help in maintaining fluent flow of operations as the information will be available to all without any obstruction. For instance;a customer wants to check the list of doctors in the dental department of the hospital, the customer can search appropriate doctors who are practicing in the dental department as accessibility to information is present which will make the hospital to be in the good books of the customer.
- Fourth feature is the ability that helps in generating reports from the information and knowledge that the organization is having with them, these reports helps in planning future activities and operations (Linden, Liu, Dargam and Hernandez, 2015). In Dallah Hospital this feature can help in smoothening management activities as it can use the statistics generated from the reports. For instance; management of Dallah Hospital can use the information for generating statistics of the patients during a year for each department who have been successfully cured.
Knowledge and information management are used interchangeably by many people but there are few differences in both which are:
|
Information Systems |
Knowledge Management Systems |
|
It deals with structured and unstructured facts and figure and focuses on data and information. Benefited from technology as codified information is dealt, it provides fact which can create knowledge. |
It deals with both codified and non-codified knowledge and focuses on understanding the knowledge. Technology is used but people and process are more important as knowledge is created by sharing. |
3). Information and Knowledge: Strategically Important for Dallah Hospital
Knowledge and information;both have different aspects yet both are interlinked somehow as information relates to fact or learning about something whereas knowledge relates to those information and skills acquired from experience or education (Larie, 2012). Though in context of healthcare both can be strategically used, information and knowledge which are important are as follows:
- Firstly, information and knowledge relating to clinical care can be strategically used because modern clinical practice involves taking advantage from the advances in clinical science, management science, and information technology (Zakaria and Yusof, 2016). Dallah Hospital can use clinical care information and knowledge in becoming more advanced in the treatments from their competitors.
- Secondly, information and knowledge related with the patients have strategic implications in context of providing more satisfaction to the customers or the patients (Gour and Srivastava, 2010). Dallah Hospital can provide better customer satisfaction through improvising the patient interactions, offering an online patient education program for long term diseases, providing electronic communication with doctors, and digital access regarding health information. This will help in attracting more patients and will indirectly result in more profit generation.
- Thirdly, information and knowledge relating to the
- are very vital and used strategically because they cater continuous and effective working of the organization (Stratton, 2017). In Dallah Hospital this information can be strategically used for planning activities as the finances and operations are key forces to plan ahead about the future and increase the sustainability.
- Fourthly, information and knowledge related to the latest trends in the technology of healthcare industry plays a crucial role in getting the strategic advantage in the market (Santilli and Vogenberg, 2015). In Dallah Hospital this information and knowledge can be used for providing latest facilities to their patients by having updated machinery in their laboratories, radiological department, and in operation theaters. Knowledge of latest trends and news can be used by the physiotherapy department for providing better services and pharmacy for maintain stock related with new medicines and medical accessories like for orthopedics uses.
Healthcare industry’s processes are knowledge driven and requirements of knowledge and information management tools in health sector are gaining attentions as they facilitate competitive advantage because hospitals, medical institutions, all these are in a run for being the best (Shahmoradi, Safadari and Jimma, 2017). As for the Dallah Hospital; planning for the clinical care knowledge and information can be done through a Clinical Decision System within the existing system which gives updates to all the doctors in their specialization field and also related with the general healthcare which emphasize on best treatment to the patients.
Secondly, knowledge and information to improve patient’s satisfaction can be planned through adding a Patient Administration System within the existing one which offers facility of feedback and queries so the patient at the time of interaction is given appropriate attention. The system can be programmed majorly for the use of patients only upon which they can access their medical history and everything related with the hospital (Perera and Peiro, 2012). Thirdly, knowledge and information of finances and operations are managed with Accounting Information System, they are of no use to patients but the management needs them for future planning to maintain fluency in the operations (Bala, 2018).
Knowledge and information regarding the latest techniques and trends in the healthcare must reach not only to the doctors but also to the patients, for this an integrated system can be used which consists of laboratory, radiological, as well as information regarding the pharmaceuticals as these all are ancillary to the hospital so they can be combined in terms of knowledge and information sharing. Plan
Appropriate Systems for Support
Knowledge and information proves vital for the growth in healthcare organizations;but with this risk of exploitation also arises, to deal with such casualties appropriate systems must be used. As such there is no specific system which is meant for reducing the risk of exploitation of data, though many types of information systems are available for healthcare sector which provide appropriate security, such as operational, tactical, clinical, administrative, financial, and electrical medical or health records. Combination of these systems is also being provided by many software vendors which offer level wise security according to the need in the whole system to the hospitals.
Addressing Security Risks in Dallah Hospital
Every year healthcare industry bears loss of about $5.6 billion each year as it is no stranger from the cyber-security challenges, because they deal with private and sensitive data every day and the hackers specially target hospitals in this industry (Grealish, 2016). The major security risks addressed at Dallah Hospital are as follows:
- First is the Ransomware; a new data security threat which mostly targets and offend hospitals, a type of malware intrude the healthcare organization’s IT system from different channels and gets downloaded by mistake. The data which is affected gets encrypted and the authorized users are not able to access that, the hackers ask for ransom through messages in lieu of restoring the access (Allan, 2018).
- Second is the black market demands are high towards medical records which is fueling the cyber-attacks. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), electronic health records (EHR) proves to be more valuable than financial data of other businesses, this is because EHRs contains names, birth dates, policy numbers, billing information, and all the information which can be used in different frauds. EHR theft take longer time as compared with normal identity theft, stolen credit cards gets cancelled, but medical identity theft are difficult to resolve (Grealish, 2016).
- Third is the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy which is popular in healthcare and other organizations, this policy gives the freedom to the staff for bringing their own electronic gadgets at work. This is done to decrease monetary expenses, but this policy can risk the hospitals from cyber-attacks as if one laptop or a cellphone is stolen or sharing of data among employees through third party file share applications is misused as they are the data is not encrypted, all this leads to exposed data of patients (Latifi, 2017).
- Fourth is the employee negligence; cyber-attacks are leading cause for data breaches but security breaches of data is also a cause which is catered through the employee negligence in reference with opening malware attached emails which compromises the confidential information of patients on the system (Swann, 2018).
The above mentioned are the major or top cyber security risks which are faced by the healthcare industry and addressed by the Dallah Hospital, if the hospital is able to deal well with these risks than adverse impact will be significantly reduced straight away. The ways to mitigate these risks are stated below:
- Firstly to deal with Ransomware; Dallah Hospital must ensure few of the things like using outdated software must be avoided and upgrading to better system is preferable, stress on the security systems must be given by layering the levels within the security which becomes hard to hack, and access of information must be given on priority basis, accordingly the security layers must be programmed (Gammons, 2016).
- Second is to deal with demand of healthcare data in the black market; Dallah Hospital can deal with this risk through implementing strong access controls for the user authentication which will prevent chances of identity thefts from the EHRs, and patients can also help by notifying suspicious activities to the hospitals while accessing their EHRs as they get any notifications related quoting provision of benefits by sharing their access details (Prasad, 2015).
- Third is to deal with theft of valuable information from the employees electronic devices under the BYOD policy; for this Dallah Hospital must ensure that employees are barred from sharing information through third party applications and a paid third-party solution can be used for sharing within organization which can ensure better security in terms of accessing the information on the personal devices (Pennic, 2011).
- Fourth is to decrease the negligence of employees; for this Dallah Hospital can arrange small training sessions based on educating the doctors, nursing staff, and others who access vital information. Sessions must include briefing about various ways of cyber-attacks and then must be tested by sending emails after the training to ensure that training went effectively and employees are more alert now (Hubbard and Seiersen, 2016).
At Dallah Hospital there are many professionals who are involved in different activities in different departments, there are diversified operations at hospital which have their own requirements for the information and knowledge, broadly the hospital service can be categorized given in the figure below.
As the hospital gives so much varied services and facilities the need of updated information and knowledge is demanded from the professionals from different departments in their respected field of work. To understand the likely priorities of these professionals in respect with information and knowledge management the below table can help.
|
Type of Information |
Type of Professionals |
Degree of Priority | |||
|
Doctors |
Ancillary |
Nursing |
Others | ||
|
Journals in the Specific Field |
High |
Moderate |
High |
Low | |
|
Newsletters |
Moderate |
High |
Moderate |
High | |
|
Online/Email Sources |
Moderate |
High |
Moderate |
High | |
|
Other Sources |
Low |
Moderate |
Low |
Moderate | |
The table signifies that how different departments of Dallah Hospital are requiring information and knowledge and what are the degrees of priorities in regard to the source of information, as for the doctors and nursing department they give high priority to gain knowledge and information from journals in their field and the ancillary department gives moderate importance and for others journal do not matter much. Newsletters are priority of ancillaries of the hospital and others, and moderate for the doctors and nursing. Online sources information is given high priority by ancillary and others, doctors and nursing are moderately depend upon this information. And lastly other sources are not preferred by the doctors and nurses, ancillary and others also moderately use information from these sources.
Specific Information Systems or Specific Knowledge Management Systems
At Dallah Hospital it is very clashing to choose among a specific information systems or a specific knowledge management system, for this firstly the roles of the doctors are discussed below:
- Undertakes patient consultations and physical examinations.
- Workloads are organized by them accordingly.
- Perform surgical procedures.
- Provides pre and post operative care.
- Medication is monitored and administered.
- Treatment planning and assessing requirements.
- Promotes health education.
Now, the mentioned above are the roles of the doctors and if it has to be decided whether any specific information system or a specific knowledge management system be effective for the role of doctors at Dallah Hospital. Health Information Management (HIM) grew substantially so as to handle information technology demands as new technologies keeps on introducing in the market. Whereas, knowledge management is heavily catering in solving problems and in optimal decision making in the healthcare sector as it is depending highly upon the access to the knowledge sources. Roles of the doctors at Dallah Hospital depicts that a specific knowledge management system will be more effective because the roles are signifying that more than the information the doctors are in need of knowledge which they can use and apply to serve better to the patients which are having hard times.
Conclusion:
The report concludes that how the information and knowledge management have become crucial for the healthcare industry in this modern world, as the competitiveness is increasing between hospitals, medical universities, clinics, and other forms of providing healthcare to the society. To understand information and knowledge management there features are discussed in the report and along with the features a hospital named Dallah is taken as an organization which is being studied and the examples and instances are quoted from it. Differentiation of information and knowledge management is discussed to understand that up-to what extent the information management is better than the knowledge management.
Information and knowledge proves to be strategically important for organizations, but the information and knowledge how it can be used by the Dallah Hospital strategically is talked about in the report and also what kind of information and knowledge is best for the hospital. Further the report discusses about how Dallah Hospital can plan for different kinds of information and knowledge which are available and strategically used and how they can use them with appropriate systems, discussion on the appropriate systems is also given that how they can be used. After that the major security risks which are addressed by the Dallah Hospital are given a glimpse that what kind of the risks are present while using information and knowledge systems, dealing with the risk that are addressed is discussed and how the hospital can reduce the adverse impact of these risks.
Later on in the report the information and knowledge requirements of the different professionals at Dallah hospital are identified and examined that how the hospital consists diversified departments and how each department’s professionals are requiring information and knowledge from various sources and what are the degree of the priorities in context to relying upon that information. Lastly on the basis of studying the roles of doctors at Dallah Hospital; the appropriate suggestion is given whether the hospital chose a specific information system or a specific knowledge system and the justification is given why hospital should chose the suggested system.
Introduction:
Knowledge management in context of field of study has existed more than thirty years and has moved towards an essential element of organizational life from just being an academic theory. It is a strategy which works towards providing the accurate knowledge to the right people and also at the right time which emphasizes on using the information into action for improving the overall performance of the organization.Knowledge management consist the capability to draw knowledge from the resources which already exist in the organization like few organizations have information systems for managing resources, and some have data at the time of organizational change process or from the human resources practices going on from the operations of the organization (Girardd, 2015).
Culture of health care industry is changing rapidly as it has become more collaborative, transparent, and proactive by the help of knowledge management activities which are being adhered into the overall system, it helps in many sub-areas of the health care in making them cost effective, error free, and crucial public resource as it is serving human beings. Applying knowledge management principles to hospital systems, groups of hospital having similar focus adds great value especially for the hospitals and their systems, and hospitals which has already invested into knowledge management infrastructure shows that it has become an essential element when it comes to the measuring of values of these hospitals in terms of successful organization as a whole (Haughom, 2018).
Health care industry is also struggling to find new information at the right time when they need it, as there is too much of information if accessed on time can save many lives in the cases of emergencies.Error in the medical field is very fatal because there is no room for it, knowledge management standardizes procedures and trainings on these procedures also get accessible (Wager, Lee and Glaser, 2017). For understanding the application and use of information and knowledge management “Dallah Hospital” is chosen as the organization as it is committed towards providing diversified health care services in a professional manner.
References:
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