Knowledge Management Problems in Healthcare - A Case Study based on the Grounded Theory

Knowledge management describes how information communication technology systems are applied to support knowledge creation, as well as in the capturing, organization, access, and use of an organization’s intellectual capital. This paper investigates knowledge management problems in healthcare. The major conclusions regarding the problems identified are: access to patient data in ICT systems or lack of data, complex medical data, and problems in saving data to ICT systems; ICT system integration, architecture, cost and regulations by political decisions and knowledge transfer problems; tacit knowledge missing in ICT systems; communication and communication barriers between primary and special healthcare; ICT security and trust problems; negative attitude or limited support from "peers" or superiors; patients’ resistance to recommendations; physicians’ stress and control-sharing problems, too short time in the policlinic to search for patient information, limited personnel resources, and work pressure. A conceptual framework of knowledge management is developed by the Grounded Theory approach. The data validates past studies, and reveals relationships between categories. The relationships between the knowledge management categories enhance confidence in the validity of the categories and relationships, and expand the emerging theory.