Abstract Body: At this Birds of a Feather session, we hope to explain and explore with participants a framework we have been developing to help us understand the conditions under which trust in a shared “knowledge commons” is warranted and what policies may encourage a safe self-governing ecology.

Mobilizing Computable Biomedical Knowledge (MCBK) is a Learning Health System initiative. The MCBK Manifesto fleshes this idea out and rallies the community to action. The work to reach the necessary level of maturity for this vision to be realized has been shared between four working groups, Standards for MCBK, Technical Infrastructure for MCBK, Policy and Coordination for Quality and Trust, and Sustainability and Mobilization for Inclusion. This session is organized by the “Policy and Trust” working group.

Since computable biomedical knowledge (CBK) would in most circumstances be shareable, it presents the same range of problems that have been studied by scholars of “the commons”. Following Garret Hardin’s Science paper on “The Tragedy of the Commons,” i.e. the overuse and consequent destruction of shared but unregulated assets, Elinor Ostrom was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize for Economics for her work demonstrating how some communities have succeeded in self-regulating the use of their “commons” without top-down governance. One aspect of our work, therefore, is to understand the models of shared knowledge commons that may be applicable to CBK.

Another dimension of our framework addresses the possible stages in the transition of knowledge from narrative, through semi-formal and formal, to executable. The source of this set of ideas is the paper by Aziz Boxwala et al, “A multi-layered framework for disseminating knowledge for computer-based decision support”. In our analysis of about 30 examples so far, we have found cases of all these “layers” and have explored the sources, culture, participation, terms and conditions, private vs. public status, and other critical dimensions, of many of these in greater depth.

Authors:

Anthony Solomonides (Presenter)
NorthShore University HealthSystem

Apurva Desai (Presenter)
Department of Veterans Affairs

Peter Embi (Presenter)
Regenstrief Institute

Blackford Middleton (Presenter)
Apervita, Inc.

Jodyn Platt (Presenter)
University of Michigan Medical School

Joshua Rubin (Presenter)
University of Michigan Medical School

Joshua Richardson (Presenter)
RTI

Philip Walker (Presenter)
Vanderbilt University Medical Center

Robin Ann Yurk (Presenter)
Mobilizing Computable Biomedical Knowledge