I put an extracts from the workshop of KMM05 below, and hope it might be useful for our medical schools in Mahidol University.

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Traditional Knowledge Management systems in the medical field predominantly focus on medical knowledge and problem solving like diagnosis, prognosis, therapy planning and critiquing, image processing with image classification, and teaching or practising medical knowledge. Today, also economical, organizational, and quality aspects move into the centre of medical Knowledge Management, such as efficiency, analysis, and optimisation of hospital processes, workflow management and the simplification of collaborative treatments by physicians of remote health care facilities. Background of this development is the tremendous technical and scientific progress in health care over the past years that dramatically increased the costs for health care but improved its quality for the population only inessential. Using the changing accounting system based on flat rates (Diagnosis Related Groups, DRGs), health care organizations have to change their operating philosophies to become profitable, enterprise-like organizations.
Fields of Knowledge Management and knowledge processing with the objective of improving the efficiency and the quality of medical treatments are, e.g:
  • the development and implementation of organizational and medical standards like clinical pathways and clinical guidelines,
  • methods and systems for simulation and evaluation of cost and quality scenarios in order to obtain knowledge for strategic decisions,
  • methods and systems for controlling of costs and quality during the treatment,
  • systems and infrastructure for the collaboration of health professionals as well as
  • methods and systems that support physicians and improve their daily routine by giving easy access to the knowledge needed.
But despite promising achievements in these areas, a lot of problems and requirements are still faced:
  • Medical processes are distinguished by a high degree of flexibility and agility, so usual process and workflow models are insufficient and too rigid for their representation.
  • Knowledge Management and knowledge-based systems are less or not integrated into the hospital information system. Thus, the consequences are repeated knowledge acquisition activities or lack of needed knowledge and with that a lower efficiency and acceptance of these systems.
  • There is a lack of standards and models for the integration of knowledge, relevant to economical aspects in the medical field.
  • And last but not least, a general acceptance of and confidence in "technical" solutions must be established by the health professionals to achieve a real improvement in medical treatment.