Inquiring Knowledge Management Systems – A Chinese Medicine Perspective Catherine Han Lin Angela Wei Hong Yang Siddhi Pittayachawan Doug Vogel Nilmini Wickramasinghe School of Business Information Technology and logistics, RMIT University, Australia School of Health Sciences, RMIT University, Australia School of Business Information Technology and logistics, RMIT University, Australia Harbin Institute of Technology, China Epworth Chair Health Information Management, Epworth HealthCare, Australia School of Business Information Technology and logistics, RMIT University, Australia catherinehan.lin@r mit.edu.au angela.yang@rmi t.edu.au siddhi.pittayachawan@ rmit.edu.au vogel.doug@gm ail.com nilmini.wickramasinghe @rmit.edu.au Abstract Information Systems/Information Technology (IS/IT) can facilitate superior healthcare delivery. However, studies of IS/IT systems and implementations for Chinese Medicine (CM) practice are very limited. We analyze different inquiring systems and identify that CM can be more easily mapped as a combination of Hegelian and Kantian inquiring systems where multiple perspectives and facts as inputs are considered and analyzed in complicated tasks. These two inquiring systems also have characteristics to cater for formal data analysis but the outcome or solution maybe individual and/or non-predefined. This is important in the context of CM and provides the platform for CM’s individual prescriptions for the same disease in different patients. From this perspective, we explore how IS/IT might be used to support the delivery of CM clinics in their daily operations. This research uses a mixed research method to study a case clinic in the context of CM clinical medicine management system. 1. Introduction Knowledge management (KM) tools and systems have been considered to be very important to businesses and organizations [14, 28]. Specifically, KM is a “technique aimed at solving the current business challenges to increase efficiency and effectiveness of core business processes while simultaneously incorporating continuous innovation and ensuring a sustainable competitive advantage” [28, p. 15]. Extensive literature can be found in this field ranging from Churchman’s inquiring systems, Nonaka’s knowledge conversion modes and knowledge spiral, to many recent KM studies [28]. KM is particularly relevant in healthcare contexts because the tools and techniques of KM enable and facilitate: 1) better access to accurate and the latest medical knowledge which continues to grow at an exponential rate [21]. 2) the improvement of the quality of clinical decision-making [21]. 3) an increase to performance, development of partnerships, evaluation of risks, better organized management, and the enhancing of economic value [14, 22]. Hence, incorporating KM into healthcare contexts can facilitate superior healthcare delivery [14, 22, 28]. This has been seen in various system developments such as Electronic Patient Records, Clinical Knowledge Management systems, Clinical Decision Support Systems and Materials Management Systems. To date, however, KM has been heavily studied and applied only to western medicine (WM) practice [14, 28]. Healthcare though, is not only restricted to WM. The increasing popularity and demand on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) worldwide [14, 27] triggers the necessity and urgency to study the possibility of applying KM and its techniques to CAM in order to achieve similar benefits. CAM practices are different to WM [14, 15]. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why CAM KM technology has not been discussed much in the literature [14, 15]. Chinese medicine (CM), for example, has its roots in philosophy that was developed thousands of years ago and it is very different to WM [14, 15]. CM diagnoses are often individual and the prescriptions are unique even for patients who have the same disease [14, 15]. Further, its diagnosis methods are distinct to WM as CM 2015 48th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences 1530-1605/15 $31.00 © 2015 IEEE DOI 10.1109/HICSS.2015.444 3682