Another take on clinical decision support
I’ve been on a mini kick for clinical decision support since last fall’s AMIA annual conference. If you recall, I said medical informatics needed a rock star to spread the word about the link between CDS and proper implementation of electronic health records.
Today, while attempting to catch up on a massive backlog of e-mail, I came across a Jan. 26 post from Steve Beller, Ph.D., on the Trusted.MD blog network. Beller writes about including consumer-centric cognitive support in the next generation of CDS systems, and he has started to put together a PowerPoint presentation on defining his goal and thoughts on how to achieve it.
I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Niel, I would rather want a ‘killer-app-done-right’ rather than a larger than life figure preaching about CDSes in EHRs. Hate to use analogy but think of all the neat little utility apps built over iPhone/Android platforms. Not all app developers have a cognitive/usability team but are creating something really powerful and useful everyday. IMHO, in the EHR world, people in control have little or no clue about creating neat, simple and useful CDS apps. There is no need for large scale roll-outs/implementations or cognitive studies. The biggest lesson learnt from Web 2.0 is to build something small, neat and useful and let the users decide the future of the app. -Chintan
In full disclosure I am Chief Scientific Officer of Logical Images, the developer of http://www.visualdxhealth.com for consumers and http://www.visualdx.com a diagnostic clinical decision support system for professionals. Having just returned from HIMSS, it is increasingly obvious that anyone with anything to sell now boasts their system is clinical decision support, no matter what it does. Bloggers and writers can bring clarity to the discussion if they define decision support around functionality..eg. medication safety systems, alerts, reminders, diagnostic systems based on findings input, referential reminder systems etc. Those of us working in the field of decision support for decades are obviously thrilled that the public discussion now includes the term “clinical decision support”…now we have to insure that it has meaning. To add to the Chintan post- see http://www.visualdxhealth.com and the “disease finder” a simple application for patients that has organically grown to millions of page views a month.