60 SUPPORTING A PUBLIC HEALTH CARE VIRTUAL ORGANIZATION BY KNOWLEDGE TECHNOLOGIES Mitja Jermol 1 (mitja.jermol@ijs.si) 1 , (nada.lavrac@ijs.si) 1,2 (tanja.urbancic@ijs.si) 2,1 , (1) Jožef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, SLOVENIA, (2) Nova Gorica Polytechnic, Nova Gorica, SLOVENIA (3) Public Health Institute, Celje, SLOVENIA The organization of public health care in Slovenia is hierarchical: the national Institute of Public Health coordinates the activities of a network of regional Public Health Institutes whose functions are public health monitoring, organizing the public health activities and proposing and implementing actions for maintaining and improving public health. Public Health Institutes themselves coordinate particular activities of a regional network of hospitals, clinics, community health centers, individual health professionals and other health care resources. In this paper we investigate the system of public health of Slovenia, viewing it as a virtual organization breeding environment, propose a selection of knowledge technologies that can be used to support the management of public health, and discuss the advantages gained by treating the system of public health institutions as a virtual organization breeding environment. 1. INTRODUCTION Effective medical prevention and good access to health care resources are important factors that affect citizens’ welfare and quality of life. As such, these are important factors in strategic planning at the national level, as well as in planning at the regional and local community level. Large quantities of data collected by medical institutions and governmental public health institutions can serve as a valuable source of evidence that should be taken into account when deciding about priorities to be included into strategic plans, or when deciding about specific measures to solve a particular health care problem. The current organization of public health care in Slovenia is hierarchical: the national Institute of Public Health (IPH) coordinates the activities of a network of regional Public Health Institutes (PHIs) whose functions are public health monitoring, organizing the public health activities and proposing and implementing actions for maintaining and improving public health. Public Health Institutes 3