Using the World Wide Web to Connect Research and Professional Practice: Towards Evidence-Based Practice

In most professional (applied) disciplines, research findings take a long time to filter into practice, if they ever do at all. The result of this is under-utilisation of research results and sub-optimal practices. There are a number of reasons for the lack of knowledge transfer. On the "demand side", people working in professional practice have little time available to keep up with the latest research in their field. In addition, the volume of research published each year means that the average practitioner would not have time to read all the research articles in their area of interest even if they devoted all their time to it. From the "supply side", academic research is primarily focused on the production rather than distribution of knowledge. While they have highly developed mechanisms for transferring knowledge among themselves, there is little investment in the distribution of research results be-yond research communities. The World Wide Web provides a potential solution to this problem, as it provides a global information infrastructure for connecting those who produce knowledge (researchers) and those who need to apply this knowledge (practitioners). This paper describes two projects which use the World Wide Web to make research results directly available to support decision making in the workplace. The first is a successful knowledge management project in a health department which provides medical staff with on-line access to the latest medical research at the point of care. The second is a project currently in progress to implement a similar system to support decision making in IS practice. Finally, we draw some general lessons about how to improve transfers of knowledge from research and practice, which could be applied in any discipline.