Things to come: postmodern digital knowledge management and medical informatics

Area of Science:

• Information Science
• Medical Informatics
• Knowledge Management

Background:

• Libraries historically served as society's collective memory.
• Digital knowledge management systems are poised to become the future repository of human knowledge.
• The current decentralized model of duplicated resources will transition to specialized, sole-source servers.

Purpose of the Study:

• To address the grand challenge of creating comprehensive knowledge management systems.
• To advocate for all scholarly scientific knowledge to be in the public domain.
• To propose a collaborative effort between medical informatics and libraries to develop advanced medical knowledge systems.

Main Methods:

• Conceptualizing the evolution from traditional libraries to digital knowledge repositories.
• Defining the characteristics of future digital knowledge management systems.
• Outlining the collaborative organizational structure needed for development.

Main Results:

• Future knowledge management systems will centralize information on specialized servers.
• Scholarly scientific knowledge should be publicly accessible, managed by scientists.
• A new organization integrating medical informatics and library science is proposed.

Conclusions:

• The integration of medical informatics and libraries is crucial for developing next-generation medical knowledge systems.
• These systems will contribute to the 'world brain,' facilitating scientific discovery and global welfare.
• The transition to digital, public-domain knowledge management is essential for the 21st century.