A clinically rooted approach to Knowledge Management in a large Italian community hospital.

A strategy for Knowledge Management (KM) implementation in a large hospital involved three areas: intranet/internet technologies for professional practice standardization and communication; multiprofessional group building for sharing and discovering of social perspectives; learning opportunities targeted to high quality information sources and information mastering methods. A cooperative prototyping approach assured high levels of user's acceptance and involvement, and initial results are encouraging, but measuring and sustaining clinical practice changes will require additional efforts.