Provider‐sponsored virtual communities for chronic patients: improving health outcomes through organizational patient‐centred knowledge management

Patients with long‐term chronic disease experience numerous illness patterns and disease trends over time, resulting in different sets of knowledge needs than patients who intermittently seek medical care for acute or short‐term problems. Health‐care organizations can promote knowledge creation and utilization by chronic patients through the introduction of a virtual, private, disease‐specific patient community. This virtual socialization alters the role of chronic disease patients from external consumers of health‐care services to a ‘community of practice’ of internal customers so that, with the tacit support of their health‐care organization, they have a forum supporting the integration of knowledge gained from the experiences of living with chronic disease in their self‐management. Patient‐centred health‐care organizations can employ the virtual community to direct and support the empowerment of chronic patients in their care.