Knowledge dissemination among healthcare design organizations (case study)

Despite years of research being conducted in the healthcare design field, we still struggle to incorporate this knowledge into decision-making across all areas of policy and practice. Integrating the knowledge into practice is even more problematic in times of crisis. The systematic documentation and dissemination of existing and emerging networks and organizations in the healthcare design context and their activities could be extremely valuable to the field to support collaboration and information sharing during a crisis. Therefore, the primary aim of this paper is to explore the knowledge transfer process among healthcare design organizations and their target group(s) and the extent of their activities in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to have a better understanding of the process, we studied three organizations actively engaged in the creation and/or dissemination of knowledge related to healthcare facilities design: one from the USA "organization A", one from the UK "organization B", and one from Sweden "organization C". The primary data source included some literature covering elements of the knowledge transfer process on the inter-organizational level. The supplementary data are from individual interviews with key representatives from each organization. The core part of this paper discusses the organizations' strategies and channels for knowledge dissemination. It also reviews the COVID-19 period, the associated challenges, and the organizations' activities to respond to the situation during the pandemic.