Clinical Decision Support for Colon and Rectal Surgery: An Overview

Clinical decision support (CDS) has been shown to improve clinical processes, promote patient safety, and reduce costs in healthcare settings, and it is now a requirement for clinicians as part of the Meaningful Use Regulation. However, most evidence for CDS has been evaluated primarily in internal medicine care settings, and […]


State of the Art in Clinical Informatics: Evidence and Examples

OBJECTIVE: The field of clinical informatics has expanded substantially in the six decades since its inception. Early research focused on simple demonstrations that health information technology (HIT) such as electronic health records (EHRs), computerized provider order entry (CPOE), and clinical decision support (CDS) systems were feasible and potentially beneficial in […]


Early Results of the Meaningful Use Program for Electronic Health Records

In 2009, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act established Medicare and Medicaid incentive programs to encourage the adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) by hospitals and eligible professionals. Under Medicare, eligible professionals who show “meaningful use” of certified EHRs are eligible for payments up to […]


Health care transformation through collaboration on open-source informatics projects: integrating a medical applications platform, research data repository, and patient summarization

BACKGROUND: The Strategic Health IT Advanced Research Projects (SHARP) program seeks to conquer well-understood challenges in medical informatics through breakthrough research. Two SHARP centers have found alignment in their methodological needs: (1) members of the National Center for Cognitive Informatics and Decision-making (NCCD) have developed knowledge bases to support problem-oriented […]


Key principles for a national clinical decision support knowledge sharing framework: synthesis of insights from leading subject matter experts

OBJECTIVE: To identify key principles for establishing a national clinical decision support (CDS) knowledge sharing framework. MATERIALS AND METHODS: As part of an initiative by the US Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) to establish a framework for national CDS knowledge sharing, key stakeholders were identified. Stakeholders’ […]


Use of order sets in inpatient computerized provider order entry systems: a comparative analysis of usage patterns at seven sites

BACKGROUND: Many computerized provider order entry (CPOE) systems include the ability to create electronic order sets: collections of clinically related orders grouped by purpose. Order sets promise to make CPOE systems more efficient, improve care quality and increase adherence to evidence-based guidelines. However, the development and implementation of order sets […]


Development and evaluation of a comprehensive clinical decision support taxonomy: comparison of front-end tools in commercial and internally-developed electronic health record systems

BACKGROUND: Clinical decision support (CDS) is a valuable tool for improving healthcare quality and lowering costs. However, there is no comprehensive taxonomy of types of CDS and there has been limited research on the availability of various CDS tools across current electronic health record (EHR) systems. OBJECTIVE: To develop and […]