| The key to the success of the clinical healthcare sector in the 21st century is to achieve an effective integration of technology with human-based clinical decision-making processes. By doing so, healthcare institutions are free to disseminate acquired knowledge in a manner that ensures its availability to other healthcare stakeholders for such areas as preventative and operative medical diagnosis and treatment. This is of paramount importance as healthcare and clinical management continues its growth as a global priority area.
A few basic statistics: the average physician spends about 25 percent of his or her time managing information and is required to learn approximately two million clinical specifics (The Knowledge Management Centre, 2000); in the UK, each doctor receives about 15 kg of clinical guidelines per annum (Wyatt, 2000); up to 98000 patients die every year as a result of preventable medical errors—in the USA, it is estimated that the financial cost of these errors is between $37.6 billion to $50 billion (Duff, 2002); adverse drug reactions result in more than 770,000 injuries and deaths each year (Taylor, Manzo, & Sinnett, 2002); in 1995, more than 5 percent of patients had adverse reactions to drugs while under medical care—43 percent of which were serious, life threatening, or fatal (Davenport & Glaser, 2002). To further compound these pressures, biomedical literature is doubling every 19 years. These statistics illustrate how difficult it is for healthcare institutions and stakeholders to successfully meet information needs that are growing at an exponential rate. |