How to set up your own knowledge-sharing site
If you’re interested in becoming involved with a knowledge-sharing service or developing and implementing one specific to your organization, the first step is benchmarking, says Nancy A. Thompson, PhD, FACHE, with the Veterans Healthcare Administration (VHA) Office of Special Projects in Washington, DC.
But don’t just look at Web sites that specialize in sharing health care innovations. Casting your net a little wider can yield positive results, Thompson says. For example, she notes that one of the most helpful Web sites her office benchmarked with in developing the Virtual Learning Center was the U.S. Navy’s Acquisition Reform Office site. "They had done a very good job of selecting grass-roots innovations that people were out there doing that saved money, got better products, and speeded up the acquisition process," she says. "We looked at how they accessed that information, how they collected it, how they compiled it, and how they made it easy for people to get that information back when they needed to get to it."
In addition to benchmarking and consulting with potential users, Thompson recommends setting up a system with "minimal to nonexistent" review of the innovations submitted by staff. "Do not make them go through numerous reviews to [have their ideas] posted," she says. "Let people share their ideas. Consider that what’s being replaced is a phone call to a buddy to try to get an answer to something. That phone call was never reviewed by anybody anyway. All you’re doing is systematizing the information that got shared between two human beings and making it available to more folks now."
Also, whether you choose to hire a contractor or use in-house experts to set up your site, make sure the site is set up in such a way that someone local can maintain it. "Do not be stuck in some long-range arrangement where the contractor has to make every change on your [Web] page," Thompson says. "Have a broad self-maintenance function on your Web site so you can go in and fix and change things as the need occurs."
Thompson’s final advice regarding a successful knowledge-sharing Web site is to have an enthusiastic team working to make the project a reality. She credits the OSP staff and VA hospital employees nationwide with shaping the Virtual Learning Center into a user-friendly, just-in-time resource that meets the needs of health care professionals.
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