Literature review on Health Knowledge Management in the last 10 years (2009-2019)

Abstract

Health care institutions (HCI in further text) are in constant interplay with their context, generating ensuing opportunities and threats. Knowledge management has been paramount when it comes to integrating state-of-art technologies in order to improve system efficiency and decision processes in hospital management outputs. Thus, it is pivotal to explain the role of knowledge management in hospital management. Research of peer-reviewed articles published from 2009 to 2019, and obtained via the Scopus database, was carried out based on two key subjects, ‘knowledge management’ and ‘health care institutions’. The research was performed through a descriptive, quantitative and qualitative analysis of the most cited 47 scientific articles found in the SCOPUS database. We conclude that 'knowledge management' (KM in further text) has become an important research area in terms of HCI management. The article identifies the central themes in KM research in HCI. However, the area on KM literature is highly fragmented, requiring development. Based on an analysis of the collected literature, we identified the key research themes and resulting development patterns, namely, the integration and interoperability of knowledge from different sources into a single platform, occupational safety, the need to ascertain quality and pertinent information among general web information, culture and social behaviour and data security. We posit that KM effectively facilitates the utilization of healthcare information resources and management decision making in hospitals.