Clinical decision support system

A clinical decision support system (CDSS) is a health information technology system that is designed to provide physicians and other health professionals with clinical decision support (CDS), that is, assistance with clinical decision-making tasks. A working definition has been proposed by Robert Hayward of the Centre for Health Evidence: 'Clinical decision support systems link health observations with health knowledge to influence health choices by clinicians for improved health care'. CDSSs constitute a major topic in artificial intelligence in medicine. A clinical decision support system (CDSS) is a health information technology system that is designed to provide physicians and other health professionals with clinical decision support (CDS), that is, assistance with clinical decision-making tasks. A working definition has been proposed by Robert Hayward of the Centre for Health Evidence: 'Clinical decision support systems link health observations with health knowledge to influence health choices by clinicians for improved health care'. CDSSs constitute a major topic in artificial intelligence in medicine. The evidence of the effectiveness of CDSS is mixed. A 2014 systematic review did not find a benefit in terms of risk of death when the CDSS was combined with the electronic health record. There may be some benefits, however, in terms of other outcomes. A 2005 systematic review concluded that CDSSs improved practitioner performance in 64% of the studies. The CDSSs improved patient outcomes in 13% of the studies. Sustainable CDSSs features associated with improved practitioner performance include the following: Both the number and the methodological quality of studies of CDSSs increased from 1973 through 2004. Another 2005 systematic review found... 'Decision support systems significantly improved clinical practice in 68% of trials.' The CDSS features associated with success include the following: However, other systematic reviews are less optimistic about the effects of CDS, with one from 2011 stating 'There is a large gap between the postulated and empirically demonstrated benefits of eHealth technologies ... their cost-effectiveness has yet to be demonstrated'. A 5-year evaluation of the effectiveness of a CDSS in implementing rational treatment of bacterial infections was published in 2014; according to the authors, it was the first long term study of a CDSS. A clinical decision support system has been defined as an 'active knowledge systems, which use two or more items of patient data to generate case-specific advice.' This implies that a CDSS is simply a decision support system that is focused on using knowledge management in such a way so as to achieve clinical advice for patient care based on multiple items of patient data. The main purpose of modern CDSS is to assist clinicians at the point of care. This means that clinicians interact with a CDSS to help to analyse, and reach a diagnosis based on, patient data.