Epistemetrics: Conceptual Domain and Applications of Knowledge Management (Km) in Health Care

By and large, the emerging field of knowledge management (KM) has failed to deliver on its promises. The literature contains a variety of attempts to define the field, to explain its core components, and to discuss its relevance and utility to organizations. But, much of this literature is replete with narratives and descriptive statements, albeit with some cases of implementation. There is a lack of a cohesive set of research questions and an even more striking lack of an appropriate, generally accepted methodology for research in knowledge management. This void becomes particularly apparent when we begin to examine the role of KM in health care and how, by incorporating KM techniques, superior health care operations might ensue. Clearly, it is almost impossible to reach such consensus and convergence when there is a lack of metrics of what constitutes knowledge and how we process it. This paper describes the subfield of epistemetrics, the metrics of knowledge in relation to the application of KM to enabling effective, efficient, and quality health care delivery. It fills the need in the literature of having a coherent system to measure knowledge. Epistemetrics is the metrics of knowledge, and is composed of three inter-related parts: what we measure in knowledge; how we measure; and why we measure (what is the value generated by knowledge). This paper describes the conceptual domain of epistemetrics and suggests some applications of knowledge management in the healthcare context. We contend that by taking such an approach the nascent field of knowledge management will be able to mature into a substantive and rigorous discipline, which in turn will be able to provide health care with needed solutions.