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Clinical decision support software helps clinicians make the right choices to deliver quality patient care.
our experience with clinical decision support
Here are a few examples of our clinical decision support projects:
- Decision support rules editor for Arden syntax
- Drug-to-Allergy interactions
- Drug-to-Drug interactions
- Drug-to-Food interactions
- Dynamically created and compiled decision support rules.
- Medical Logic Modules (MLMs - written in Arden syntax)
overview of clinical decision support
Clinical decision support leverages electronic medical records to help clinicians make the right choices to deliver quality patient care. There are a number of levels of decision support available from the automated drug to drug interaction checking to allergy checking to suggested protocols for treating patients.
Clinical decision support includes:
- Contraindication alerts
- Management suggestions
- Data interpretations
- Treatment
- Protocols
- Diagnosis scores
- Contraindication alerts
- Contraindication alerts get the clinician's attention to let them know that a particular medication or treatment is not typically recommended for a particular patient given their medical history. For example, if a patient has diabetes,some medications would not be recommended, such as those which would increase the chancee of weight gain or reduce insulin production. This contraindication alert typically will allow clinicians to override their advice, but helps them make informed decisions.
- Management suggestions
- Management suggestions can help the clinician come up with ideas as to how to manage a patient's condition. It may suggest that a healthier diet and aerobic exercise would be suggested for hypertension patients.
- Data interpretation
- Automated data interpretation can help a clinician determine whether a flucuation in readings is within or outside of a typical patient. For example, blood pressure readings over time could determine a typical range for that patient. Outside of that range, the patient may be at risk.
- Treatment
- Clinical decision support can also suggest treatments for patients based on their condition. Often, hospitals try to suggest mild treatments before the doctors start on the more complex/risky ones. For example, one treatment suggestion may be recommending over the counter Ibuprofen for muscle pain instead of Celebrex.
- Protocols
- Clinical decision support can help remind doctors to use the necessary protocols for a particular patient. For example, some stroke patients need to be administered TPA within 30 minutes in order to recover more fully. Each clinical group may have thier own protocol for particular types of cases.
- Diagnosis Scores
- Clinical decision support can also be used to create a diagnosis score for a patient such as through the SF-36. The SF-36 provides a basic diagnosis score which can be used to determine how healthy a particular patient is.
Often, clinical decision support includes logic which is expressed using the Arden Syntax for Medical Logic Systems. Arden Syntax is usually used in Medical Logic Modules (MLMs) for Clinical decision support.
We have done a number of projects using Arden Syntax to express clinical decision support rules, including one which dynamically compiled Arden Syntax rules into C# and then into a .NET assembly.
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