Supporting a Public Health Care Virtual Organization by Knowledge Technologies

The organization of public health care in Slovenia is hierarchical: the national Institute of Public Health coordinates the activities of a network of regional Public Health Institutes whose functions are public health monitoring, organizing the public health activities and proposing and implementing actions for maintaining and improving public health. Public Health Institutes themselves coordinate particular activities of a regional network of hospitals, clinics, community health centers, individual health professionals and other health care resources. In this paper we investigate the system of public health of Slovenia, viewing it as a virtual organization breeding environment, propose a selection of knowledge technologies that can be used to support the management of public health, and discuss the advantages gained by treating the system of public health institutions as a virtual organization breeding environment.