CDSS Implementation: Impacts on Healthcare (CIS 555, Winter 2020)

This report examines the impact of Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSS) on healthcare organizations, societies, and individuals, drawing upon peer-reviewed published research. The report highlights the role of CDSS in improving patient care and safety outcomes, particularly in medication administration, by reducing errors and providing clinicians with timely reminders and advice. While CDSS implementation has been associated with challenges such as false alerts, the report emphasizes the importance of user-friendly interfaces and appropriate training to ensure its effective adoption. Ultimately, the report concludes that CDSS plays a significant role in enhancing medication safety, reducing inappropriate laboratory testing, and improving the overall reputation of healthcare organizations, advocating for leadership intervention to support its rapid adaptation in practice. This document is available on Desklib, a platform offering a variety of study resources for students.

Running head: HEALTH INFORMATICS
Health informatic
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Author’s note

1HEALTH INFORMATICS
Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS) is an emerging information management tool
in health care that aids in clinical decision making process. Some of the problems that
resulted in the development of this tool included growth in demand for quality and quality of
clinical data. With big data and utilization, digital tools like electronic health records (EHRs)
and computerised physician order entry (CPOE) reduces the hassles involved in managing
data and decreased rate of errors in clinical setting. However, high quality decision support
was needed to reap the full benefits of EHR and CPOE. CDSS fulfilled this need by giving
active and passive advice based on set of patient data [1]. Thus, CDSS implementation has
been associated with many positive impacts on organizations and individuals.
CDSS has helped in positively influencing patient care and safety outcomes. It has
worked to eliminate common errors that occur during medication administration process thus
leading to medication safety. The tool use case-based reasoning to provide support to
clinicians in clinical decision making. Certain characteristics of individual patient are
matched to computerized knowledge base and software algorithm works to generate specific
recommendation for patient. In the area of medication administration, it provides advice or
reminders on drug selection, allergies, dosage and possible drug-drug interactions about
patient [2]. Thus, medication safety has increased with the implementation of CDSS in health
care settings. CDSS has resulted in improvement in process of care, preventive care and
reduce the clinical and cost related outcomes thus leading to many positive benefits for health
care organization [4].
Health care professionals like nurse and physicians have acknowledged the utility of
CDSS implementation during the care process. A focus group study done with physicians
and nurses revealed that they found the reminders given by this tool to be very effective as it

2HEALTH INFORMATICS
helped them to take into account things the forgot while looking at other patient. Reminders
on drug dosing, laboratory test and blood pressure monitoring helped nurses and physicians
to provide quality care. However, use of CDSS has been associated with challenges for some
health care staffs too because of false alerts. Such incidence reduces trust on the tool [3].
Thus, to ensure that CDSS is embraced by all health care professionals, it will be necessary
for software developers to focus on improving the structured data so that relevant
information is presented to screens for clinicians. Appropriate training on use of tool and
ensuring user-friendly interface is paramount too.
To conclude, CDSS has played a role in influencing the reputation of health care
organizations too. As the work process and overall management of patient data has
improved, it has reduced and time and effort that was used in dealing with adverse events and
missed episodes of care. It has not only enhanced medication safety during care, but also
worked to reduce the number of inappropriate laboratory testing. Effective adaptation of
CDSS is the key to success of health care organizations. However, as the adoption process is
slow, leaders should intervene to support rapid adaptation of the tool in practice.

3HEALTH INFORMATICS
References:
1. Kubben P, Dumontier M, Dekker A, editors. Fundamentals of Clinical Data Science.
Springer; 2019.
2. Jia P, Zhang L, Chen J, Zhao P, Zhang M. The effects of clinical decision support
systems on medication safety: an overview. PloS one. 2016;11(12).
3. Koskela T, Sandström S, Mäkinen J, Liira H. User perspectives on an electronic decision-
support tool performing comprehensive medication reviews-a focus group study with
physicians and nurses. BMC medical informatics and decision making. 2015
Dec;16(1):6.
4. Bellodi E, Vagnoni E, Bonvento B, Lamma E. Economic and organizational impact of a
clinical decision support system on laboratory test ordering. BMC medical informatics
and decision making. 2017 Dec;17(1):179.