A System Architecture Design for Knowledge Management (KM) in Medical Genetic Testing (MGT) Laboratories

Although genetic services have potential value for health care and disease control, there is no systematic solution for knowledge capture in Medical Genetic Testing (MGT) Laboratories. This paper addresses such knowledge management (KM) technology weakness in genetics domain, then proposes an information system (IS) architecture to establish process automation and content management of the distributed workflow of knowledge generation and knowledge management (KG&KM) during MGT result interpretation. The presented IS will validate the interpretation decision by using information systems/information technologies (IS/IT), esp. KM tools, such as workflow management system (WfMS), search engine and groupware. Once developed and implemented, our integrated system will significantly improve MGT lab researchers' KG&KM performance through increasing knowledge capture, improving documentation quality and maintaining (if not improving) users' information satisfaction