Volume 13, Number 4 Article by Srinivas Krishna December, 2001
Knowledge Management in the Healthcare Sector :
Srinivas Krishna of Andersen proposes a new model for an enterprise-wide KM system in the healthcare sector, in keeping with the changing landscape. With the growing number of players and an exponential increase in expectations, the current fragmented model needs to be replaced by one that integrates the diverse set of players and manages the process of knowledge creation and dissemination. Swami Subramanian of Dr Reddy’s Labs stresses the crucial link between innovation and business success in pharmaceuticals, where the processes of discovery and innovation are complex enough, and the subsequent steps involved in converting the output of the process to a marketable product are even more complex. It is only of late, he points out, that Indian pharmaceutical companies are making the transition from an ‘FMCG mentality’ to a knowledge and innovation-driven model, thus emphasising the need to have the right behavioural context for KM. He considers the challenges thrown up by developments like ‘New Biology’ and enumerates some experiments with KM at Dr Reddy’s. Pawan Mamidi examines the conceptual underpinnings of the field of intellectual property rights and emphasises the relationship between scientific/technical progress, common law techniques and economic analysis of innovation. Emphasising the importance of an attitudinal change towards experimentation, he concludes that consciously contrived experimentation with alternatives to the obvious, conditioned by utilitarian criteria, may be formalised into a systemic practice of creativity.
Reprint No 01406e
