Knowledge management in the era of digital medicine: A programmatic approach to optimize patient care in an academic medical center

Abstract

Introduction: The pace of medical discovery is accelerating to the point where caregivers can no longer keep up with the latest diagnosis or treatment recommendations. At the same time, sophisticated and complex electronic medical records and clinical systems are generating increasing volumes of patient data, making it difficult to find the important information required for patient care. To address these challenges, Mayo Clinic established a knowledge management program to curate, store, and disseminate clinical knowledge.

Methods: The authors describe AskMayoExpert, a point-of-care knowledge delivery system, and discuss the process by which the clinical knowledge is captured, vetted by clinicians, annotated, and stored in a knowledge content management system. The content generated for AskMayoExpert is considered to be core clinical content and serves as the basis for knowledge diffusion to clinicians through order sets and clinical decision support rules, as well as to patients and consumers through patient education materials and internet content. The authors evaluate alternative approaches for better integration of knowledge into the clinical workflow through development of computer-interpretable care process models.

Results: Each of the modeling approaches evaluated has shown promise. However, because each of them addresses the problem from a different perspective, there have been challenges in coming to a common model. Given the current state of guideline modeling and the need for a near-term solution, Mayo Clinic will likely focus on breaking down care process models into components and on standardization of those components, deferring, for now, the orchestration.

Conclusion: A point-of-care knowledge resource developed to support an individualized approach to patient care has grown into a formal knowledge management program. Translation of the textual knowledge into machine executable knowledge will allow integration of the knowledge with specific patient data and truly serve as a colleague and mentor for the physicians taking care of the patient.

Keywords: computer‐interpretable guidelines; knowledge management; knowledge representation.

Figure 1

Knowledge Management time line. This figure illustrates the major milestones in the development of the Knowledge Management program at the Mayo Clinic

Figure 2

AskMayoExpert utilization growth. This figure illustrates the increase in unique users per month since the introduction of AME

Figure 3

AskMayoExpert content growth. This chart shows the increase over time in the numbers of topics and frequently asked questions housed in AME

Figure 4

Knowledge Management at Mayo Clinic. This diagram illustrates the process by which subject matter experts, working with writers and editors, generate core clinical content, which is vetted by Knowledge Content Boards and stored in the Knowledge Content Management System. This content serves as the basis for a variety of mechanisms for delivering knowledge to providers, patients, and consumers