The health care industry is increasingly becoming a knowledge-based community that depends critically on knowledge management (KM) activities to improve the quality of care. Utilizing knowledge management systems (KMS) to manage medical information and health care knowl- edge to support the full spectrum of knowledge needs in the nursing process has become an im- portant issue for nursing professionals. Hence, the objective of this research is to propose a con- ceptual framework that integrates nursing process, KM activities, and enabling information tech- nology (IT) for designing such a nursing KMS. The framework indicates the critical knowledge management activities in nursing process and the enabling IT based on the task/technology fit theory. With this framework, KMS developers can work with nursing professionals to easily identify the suitable IT associated with the nursing process when developing a nursing KMS.
Keywords: health care, e-health, knowledge management, knowledge management systems, nursing process