Clinical Decision Support - A Major Contribution

Informatics group outlines clinical decision-support 'road map'

Supportive policy and new financial incentives are needed to increase healthcare's adoption of clinical decision-support systems, according to a report produced by the American Medical Informatics Association. The report said that providers are often reluctant to purchase clinical decision-support systems because doing so might increase liability, not be cost-efficient, and privacy regulations hinder them from accessing patient data.

The report also said that a lack of sharing best practices and providing feedback to vendors has stymied the development of adequate systems that are easy to customize. "Thus, lessons learned in clinical use, which could be used to greatly improve the efficiency, acceptability, and value of CDS (clinical decision support) tools, are translated into improved products and implementation strategies very slowly, if at all." Moreover, there is "no mechanism for post-marketing surveillance" and that prevents improvement. The AMIA report suggests that demonstration projects should be launched by 2008, and they could lead to the development of better systems that are more widely used. In 2005, the federal government's Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology commissioned the association to write the report. The association is an organization that studies the development of medical informatics and has 3,000 members made up of providers and researchers. Read the Roadmap for National Action on Clinical Decision Support.

By Joseph Mantone / HITS staff writer

Go here and read - this is vital and important stuff and it is crucial the recommendations get adopted!

http://www.amia.org/inside/initiatives/cds/

David.