Predict the trend of information technology knowledge applied in healthcare management

The information technology (IT) might improve the performance of healthcare organizations and offer better service in competitive environment. However, it is difficult to forecast the trend of knowledge development and to choose and introduce the appropriate ones, owing to lack of theoretic methods. In this paper, we propose a feasible appraising structure based on grey theory to predict the trend of IT knowledge items applied in the field of healthcare management (HM). In this study, we exploit the Google scholar searching engine to collect raw data by keywords of IT knowledge items and HM. We suppose that the numbers of searching result including papers and books interpreting knowledge prevalence. The forecasting data is produced by grey theory, while the forecasting accuracy is indexed by mean absolute percentage error. Thus, the managers of healthcare might introduce an IT knowledge item according to its development trend and phase state of life cycle.