The Department of Health Research, an arm of the Union health ministry,  will soon give its final shape to the 'Knowledge Management Policy for Health Services, Education and Research' which would enable scientists, researchers, students, specialists, and other stakeholders to work closely for advancing human development in critical areas pertaining to health.

Sources in the health ministry said that the ministry will soon give the final shape to the policy once it concludes the public debates on the draft policy. After issuing the draft 'Knowledge Management Policy for Health Services, Education and Research', the health ministry has been holding 'public debates' on the draft policy in different parts of the country to evolve consensus among all the stake-holders. The last of the series of public debates will be held on November 18 at National Institute of Cholera & Enteric Disease, Beliaghata, Kolkata.  The ICMR had already held such debates in Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai.  It will finalise the policy  after incorporating the relevant comments and suggestions received through comments and the public debates.

The policy aims to develop an efficient Health Knowledge Management System for collection, dissemination and utilization of knowledge for improving the quality of Health Services, Education and Research. It also aims to make authentic information about health services available to health professionals, managers, policy makers and common man. It proposes to promote sharing of health resources in health services delivery, education and research and to manage health aspects of disasters effectively using knowledge management tools. The draft policy also aims to enable access to high quality health and medical education and also to contribute towards development of an efficient health research system.

The Department of Health Research had earlier invited comments and suggestions from the public on the draft policy document.

In order to create harmony among various health service providers and to impart their knowledge and services to the public at all times, the policy proposes: Empowering the end user for better access to Health Service; ? Enriching health professionals with knowledge about available resources around them by standardizing and linking functional, infrastructural and logistic information available with different healthcare service providers in Government and private sectors;? Increasing accountability of healthcare professionals and services towards human life; Connecting remote areas and difficult terrains by effective use of telemedicine; Expert opinions of specialists need to be ensured on a structured fixed time interval basis as well as on emergency basis; Efficiently handling health aspects of disasters by using data mining and business intelligence tools on available data for quickly finding information about available resources around disaster site and mobilizing these resources; and establishing an user friendly but informative electronic medical record system.

In order to improve the quality of medical education uniformly across the country with help of knowledge network, the policy proposes: Sharing knowledge by establishing an efficient physical network, connecting all medical/dental/nursing/other health related professional colleges; Developing unified high quality standards in health education across the country;? Updating knowledge of health professionals by conducting online continued medical education/special training programmes; etc.

For increasing use of knowledge in medical research, the policy proposes:  Creating information culture by adopting recent advances in information and communication technologies; Improving interaction between national and international researchers and stakeholders working in different subject areas by developing collaborative networks and alliances;? Enhancing research to policy through collaborations and exchange of information between researchers and health professionals; etc.

The policy proposes to establish an Appropriate Authority for developing and implementing a comprehensive plan for utilization of knowledge network for health service delivery, medical education and research.