The Contribution of Collaborative Tools and Technologies in Facilitating Tacit Healthcare Knowledge Sharing amongst Clinicians : In the Case of Akadamiska Hospital, Uppsala, Sweden

Abstract: Healthcare is a knowledge-intensive field. A significant quantum of extremely vital and viable healthcare knowledge exists in a tacit form, yet due to various operational and technical reasons such healthcare knowledge is not entirely utilized and put into professional practice. The strong increase in expert work and knowledge-intensive fields make examining the topic timely and hypothetically interesting.The most significant contribution of this study is the increase in understanding, as well as, tacit healthcare knowledge sharing amongst physicians and clinicians with the type of collaborative tools and technologies they have at their disposal. Collaborative tools and technologies help employees of an organization work closely with their colleagues, partner organization and other volunteers as tacit healthcare knowledge sharing among clinicians such as sharing of best practices, tips and tricks, inter professional collaborative networking, clinical experiences and skills are known to have a significant impact on the quality of medical diagnosis and decisions.This paper posits that collaboration tools and technologies can provide new opportunities for tacit healthcare knowledge sharing amongst health-experts, and demonstrates this by presenting findings from a review of relevant literature and a survey conducted with Medical Doctors who have moderate to high interaction with collaborative tools and technologies in the healthcare industry. Semi-structure interviews were conducted with health-experts (Medical Doctors and clinicians) of Akademiska Hospital, Uppsala, Sweden. Final thematic analysis unveiled six themes as potential contributors of collaborative tools and technologies in facilitating tacit healthcare knowledge sharing among clinicians. The newly developed themes are described and interpreted briefly; extensive literature review has been carried out to relate the emerged themes with the literatures and part of interview participant responses are supported as well. Finally this research suggests further empirical studies shall be conducted to acknowledge this study.