Knowledge management: evaluating the organizational requirements and culture for an emerging technology.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the application of knowledge management concepts to an information systems (IS) knowledge base, as opposed to a clinical one. The field of Medical Informatics is committed to helping others manage medical information and knowledge through the application of information technology. At Partners HealthCare, a wide variety of clinical information management systems have been built and implemented in complex environments, creating an extensive applied informatics knowledge base. How should healthcare IS departments manage this intellectual capital? That's the question that Partners HealthCare is asking its senior and middle IS managers. This paper reports on an internal survey addressing Knowledge Management (KM) requirements, the potential application of this technology in our organization, and discusses where we are today and where to go from here.