1.2 What are learning health systems?

Health systems constantly adjust and change. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are learning through that process! When learning does occur, it is by making the link between past action, the effectiveness of those actions and future action. When this linkage happens, the knowledge within a system (which is held by people, teams and organizations within the system) can be retained, restructured and utilized to prevent or solve problems.

A bit of background on how our understanding of learning has grown and evolved in recent years: You may have heard of “learning organizations” before, which is a theory put forward by Dr. Peter Senge and colleagues. Relatedly, the 4I model of organizational learning developed by Crossan, Lane & White in 1999 provides further understanding of learning across levels of organizations. This theory and the related body of work is a piece of what constitutes the understanding of learning in this course as well. Learning organizations theories were developed and focus on companies — particularly those that are aiming to innovate and therefore must remain nimble — and providing strategies and tools to support them. More recently, additional scholarship and experience from practice have helped us understand learning “loops” and “means”, which will be discussed in subsequent modules.

You can read more about how this field of scholarship that has been built over recent decades in the Learning Health Systems report on pages 5-6 and also find additional citations for further reading.