Public Health and Hospital design, development, and use of Knowledge Management and Knowledge Management Software (KM/KMS) in emergency preparedness program development and maintenance

Public health departments have been designing, developing, and maintaining emergency preparedness programs for over a decade with varying degrees of success. The foundation of any preparedness program is planning, as it provides continuity through leadership and personnel transition, and the fusion point for the collection, organization, analysis of information and experience, which is knowledge. A preparedness program with a Knowledge Management (KM) Strategy supported by Knowledge Management Software (KMS) provides significant opportunities to maintain a steady-state level of preparedness and realize continual and enhanced operational efficiencies. Knowledge Management is generally described as a process of developing, capturing, disseminating, and implementing organizational knowledge. Preparedness/planning elements: strategic operational and tactical level planning; procedural documents (Standard Operating Guides (SOP) and Standard Operating Procedures (SOP)), Job Aids, and Field Operations Guides (FOG); and standardized doctrinal guidance are overwhelming when viewed as an incoherent whole not organized by a KM Strategy. The KM Strategy needs to go beyond individual health departments and hospitals to include regional and statewide planning standardization to the greatest degree possible. Budget and resulting personnel and program challenges necessitate a sharing of appropriate resources within preparedness programs. Doctrine and guidance elements can logically shrink the planning responsibilities of individual departments and organizations by demonstrating a best-practice how to accomplish shared operational objectives while providing a focus for jurisdictional specific planning elements. During the demonstration, participants are able to review and comment on an existing KM Strategy and KMS System. The combination of the KM Strategy and KMS System enables participants to review a Health Department and Hospital Preparedness Program Model encompassing preparedness and planning elements covering every potential planning element designated by Federal, State, and Local Guidance and functional operational requirements.