Clinical Decision Support System

Clinical Decision Support System

Introduction

Clinical decision support system is helpful for patients, healthcare staff and other people who have information about the health of any patient. The system of clinical decision support is presented and organized in an efficient way so that it can be helpful for healthcare providers and health of the patients. Clinical decision support system includes many tools that can be helpful in increasing the workflow of the system. A system of reminders and alerts is included in the system to enhance the care of patients and providers. Moreover other tools that are included in the system are condition specific order sets, clinical guidelines, documentation templates, focused patient data reports, relevant reference information and diagnostic support (HealthIT, 2013).

Discussion

Developments in CDS

According to the new research, the healthcare facilities which are provided in the developed countries are sometimes unable to provide the best quality of evidence based care. A national study revealed that the adults in United States receive half of the care that is their need. The US institute of medicine reported that approximately 99000 citizens of US die each year due to errors in medications that can be preventable (Lobach, Balas, Houlihan & Kawamoto, 2005). Healthcare organizations are moving towards the system of clinical decision support to deal with the above mentioned problems of care deficiency. The clinical decision support systems help in the process of clinical decision making by providing patient specific assessments and recommendations. Computer based systems or manual systems are created in which reminders and alerts are linked with the records of those patients who need specific preventive care services. Computerized systems of physicians order entry are also developed that can help in to facilitate the patient specific recommendation that can become the part of order entry process. The development of these systems have resulted in the improvement of prescribing practices, improved preventive care delivery, reduction in medication errors improved status of recommended care standards. The system of clinical decision has found to be improved in practice as compared to other systems. The system is more efficient and effective and results in the enhancement of clinical practice (Lobach, Balas, Houlihan & Kawamoto, 2005). Adverse drug events are costly and common problems and every year approximately 780000 people are affected from it. Adult hospital incidence rates are 2 to 7 admissions per 100 admissions and it determines (Classen et al., 1997). It was found by the inpatient studies that the errors of medications take place in the drug ordering phase. The basic types of medication errors are false doses of medication, missing a dose, incorrect routes and frequencies.

The preventive strategies to reduce the medication errors should target the system instead of individuals and it is an effective way to reduce the errors (IOM, 1999). The clinical decision support system is an important intervention which focuses on the ordering phase of medicines and in that phase all the medication errors mostly occur. However, despite of increasing the speculative advantages of ...