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Background With the passing of time, knowledge like other resources can become obsolete. Thus, people in a healthcare system need to update their knowledge in order to keep pace with the ongoing changes in their operational environment. Information technology continually provides a great amount of new knowledge which can lead to healthcare professionals becoming overloaded with knowledge. This overloading can be alleviated by a process of unlearning which enables the professional to retain just the relevant and critical knowledge required to improve the quality of service provided by them. Objective This paper shows some of the tools and methods that Hospital-in-the-Home Units (HHUs) have used to update the physician–patient knowledge and the technology knowledge of the HHUs' personnel. Design A survey study was carried out in the HHU in Spanish health system in 2010. Setting Fifty-five doctors and 62 nurses belonging to 44 HHUs. Interventions None. Results Three hypotheses are presented and supported, which suggest that technology and physician–patient knowledge is related to the unlearning context and the unlearning context impacts positively on the quality of health services provided. Conclusion The key benefits of the unlearning context for the quality of service provided in HHUs are clear: it enables them to identify and replace poor practices and also avoids the reinvention of the wheel (e.g.: by minimizing unnecessary work caused by the use of poor methods) and it reduces costs through better productivity and efficiency (improving services to patients). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

While the information technologies provide organizational members with explicit concepts, such as writing instruction manuals, the 'organizational memory' provides individuals with tacit knowledge, such as systematic sets, routines and shared visions. This means that individuals within an organization learn by using both the organizational memory and the information technologies. They interact to reduce organizational information needs contributing to improve organizational innovativeness. However, the utilization of the organization memory or the technology infrastructure does not guarantee that appropriate information is used in appropriate circumstances or that information is appropriately updated. In other words, previous memories reflect a world that is only partially understood and assimilated, which might lead individuals to doing the wrong things right or the right things wrong. This paper examines the relative importance and significance of the existence of unlearning to the presence and nature of 'organizational memory and technology'. We further examine the effect of the existence of organizational memory and information technology on conditions that promote organizational innovativeness. These relationships are examined through an empirical investigation of 291 large Spanish companies. Our analysis found that if the organization considers the establishment of an unlearning culture as a prior step in the utilization of organization memory or the technology infrastructure through organizational innovativeness, then organization memory and technology have a positive influence on the conditions that stimulate organizational innovativeness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]