(Week 7) [T12] Clinical Decision Support Systems

Question 1

What is a CDSS?

Answer 1

A piece of software whose main purpose is to assist clinicians at the point of care. A CDSS makes suggestions.

Question 2

What are the 3 types of CDSS?

Answer 2

1. Information management.
   Tools that provide the data and knowledge needed.
   Guidelines are statements to assist the decisions. They are used as information as well. They arise from expert consensus on screening, diagnosis or management. They often use decision trees.
2. Focusing attention.
   Remind patient’s diagnosis or problems that might be overlooked by the physician (e.g., flag abnormal values, drug-drug interactions).
3. Providing patient-specific recommendations.
   Provide standard assessments or advice based on sets of patient’s specific data. Yet to be implemented.

Question 3

What are the CDSS requirements?

Answer 3

• Access to “good” data.
• Background knowledge.
• Employment of an intelligent approach to problem-solving.

Question 4

What are the CDSS most common applications?

Answer 4

• Allergy alerts.
• Drug reminders and drug-drug interactions.
• Clinical reminders and guidelines.

Question 5

Explain the CDSS dimensions.

Answer 5

1. Intended function of the system.
   Determining what is true about a patient + what to do.
2. Mode for giving advice.
   Passive: physician uses the system if needed.
   Active: the system gives advice automatically under certain conditions.
3. Communication style.
4. Underlying decision-making process.
   Could be decision trees, Bayesian modelling or decision analysis.
5. Human-computer interaction.
   Needs to be intuitive.

Question 6

State the advantage and disadvantages of CDSS.

Answer 6

Advantage
+ Health and economic impact.

Disadvantages
- Integration, cost.
- Need to be updated.
- Limited resources.
- Legal implications, who is responsible for failures.
- Can possibly have poor quality data.