Clinical Decision Support
Clinical Decision Support (CDS) products offer real-time, patient-specific recommendations to improve decision-making across various clinical scenarios. These tools actively assist with differential diagnosis generationby analyzing patient data from the EHR or other sources and suggesting likely conditions based on symptoms, medical history, and lab results. CDS also aids medication management by calculating personalized drug dosages, checking for drug-drug interactions, and recommending alternatives. Embedded into workflows, CDS surfaces alerts, reminders, and diagnostic insightsautomatically, reducing cognitive load and minimizing errors. Its customizabilityallows providers to develop rules that align with their unique workflows, making it a flexible tool across care settings.
Typical Capabilities of CDS Products:
• Diagnostic Suggestions:Generate differential diagnoses based on patient data.• Medication Management:Provide alerts for drug-drug interactions, dosage recommendations, and cost-saving alternatives.• Drug Dosage Calculators:Adjust doses based on weight, age, renal function, or other clinical factors.• Clinical Reminders:Trigger alerts for preventive care, follow-ups, or critical care events.• Customizability:Enable providers to develop rules and alerts tailored to their workflows.• EHR Integration:Seamlessly embed into care workflows to deliver real-time, actionable insights.• Ad Hoc Decision Support:Assist with decisions at specific moments, across various clinical scenarios.
Product Usage: Inferscience is used as a sidecar within athenahealth to suggest diagnosis codes and highlight missed areas during patient visits, predominantly for new providers.
Strengths: Inferscience seamlessly integrates with athenahealth, offers effective clinical specificity, supports risk adjustment efforts and is cost-effective for small organizations.
Weaknesses: The tool wasn’t optimized for pre-visit or chart prep usage, took too long to load outside of the patient visit context, and sometimes produced irrelevant or illogical suggestions.
Overall Judgment: Inferscience’s integration with athenahealth and its usefulness for new providers were significant advantages, but limitations in its utility for chart preparation and occasional inaccuracies in its suspecting algorithm led to the eventual use of an internally developed solution.