BENEFITS OF CLINICAL DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS (CDSS) IN HOSPITALS AND CLINICS

(Hr Interview, Question and answers asked in Industry ARC)

1. Information Technology System:

A clinical decision support system (CDSS) is a health information technology system that is designed to assist physicians and other health professionals with clinical decision-making tasks. 

2. Clinical decision support (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 to achieve clinical advice for patient care based on multiple items of patient data.

3. Clinical decision support in Hospitals:

Knowledge-based CDSS:

Most CDSSs consist of three parts: the knowledge base, an inference engine, and a mechanism to communicate. The knowledge base contains the rules and associations of compiled data which most often take the form of IF-THEN rules. The inference engine combines the rules from the knowledge base with the patient’s data. The communication mechanism allows the system to show the results to the user as well as have input into the system.

Non-knowledge-based CDSS:

CDSSs that do not use a knowledge base use a form of artificial intelligence called machine learning, which allow computers to learn from past experiences and/or find patterns in clinical data. This eliminates the need for writing rules and for expert input. Nevertheless, they can be useful as post-diagnostic systems. Two types of non-knowledge-based systems are artificial neural networks and genetic algorithms.

3. Future scope:

CDSSs will be most beneficial in the future when healthcare facilities are "100% electronic" in terms of real-time patient information, thus simplifying the number of modifications that have to occur to ensure that all the systems are up to date with each other.

4. Clinical tasks:

Much effort has been put forth by many medical institutions and software companies to produce viable CDSSs to support all aspects of clinical tasks. However, with the complexity of clinical workflows and the demands on staff time high, care must be taken by the institution deploying the support system to ensure that the system becomes a fluid and integral part of the clinical workflow. Some CDSSs have met with varying amounts of success, while others have suffered from common problems preventing or reducing successful adoption and acceptance.

Reference: Link

MBA  - Management of Information Systems Text Book