Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSS)

Big vote of confidence for emerging CDSS software industry as risk assessment algorithm posts "very high" rankings in managing cardiovascular disease.

Data from 137 CVD (cardiovascular disease) patients attending a physician’s clinic were analyzed with CDSS software and then compared with physicians' recommendations based on a manual review of the guidelines. “The tool’s risk assessment algorithm correlated very highly,” reported David Peiris and his colleagues from the George Institute for International Health in the peer-reviewed Journal of Medical Internet Research.

Successes in ongoing tests of CDSS software bolster their utility in the medical community as they assist primary care providers in CVD risk management, development and evaluation.
CDSS software supports, says online OpenClinical, “the criteria set out by Perreault & Metzger for “supporting clinical diagnosis and treatment plan processes; and promoting use of best practices, condition-specific guidelines, and population-based management."

Best-in-Class Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSS) features:

• Ability to handle new HITECH rules that bring greater scrutiny to dictation and transcription practices and HIPPA constraints?
• Can deploy or extend functionality to a patient-centered medical home management model
• Fully integrated with billing and charting systems

Top Considerations before Buying Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSS):
 
Is the system a true “beginning-to-end” system and thereby one that can create impact on the overall care process and patient health outcomes? Half a system is basically no system warns the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in its recent report, “Clinical Decision Support Systems: State of the Art”.

Key Products:

1. Anvita Health, formerly SafeMed, was founded in 2000 by physicians to address problems of medical errors, especially in drug safety. Today, Anvita "provides analytical software solutions that personalizes, prioritizes, and identifies treatment options for doctors and patients to make medical decisions." Anvita's software solution analyzes various patient data and applicable insurer business rules, and ranks therapies for patients of various arbitrary complexities; Imaging that automatically identifies diagnostic imaging tests for patients that yield a diagnosis, as well as enables pre-authorization of imaging tests; and Quality, which enables real-time algorithmic determination of gaps in medical care, as well as deleterious therapies. Anvita pioneered the Insight analytics engine, developed in collaboration with top U.S. medical schools, which has transformed clinical decision making into a multi-dimensional tool for improving the quality of health care and identifying costs savings for individuals and populations.

2. Zynx Health is a provider of evidence-based clinical decision support software, like ZynxCare.The company provides Web-based software for disease management, clinical quality improvement, emergency department diagnosis and treatment support, pain management, and medical facility safety. For customers, it claims more than 1,700 hospitals across the US, including those associated with Adventist Health System, Ascension Health, HealthEast Care System, Norton Healthcare, St. Joseph Health System, and Winona Health System. The company was founded in 1996 as a subsidiary of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and today is a subsidiary of Hearst Business Media. Ed Daniels, a health care consultant, commented in Smart Product Ecosystem Connections that “Clinical Decision Support is finally beginning to get traction. The critical questions are how to influence clinical decision making without slowing clinical workflow.”Daniels cites Zynx as an interesting vendor that is experimenting with a different and worthwhile approach.

3. GE Healthcare. The CCHIT (Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology) has certified GE's Centricity's Enterprise Version 6.0 is CCHIT, and that it meets the Commission's inpatient computerized medical records criteria. The Commission, an independent, nonprofit organization, is charged with bringing patient care into the digital age andto save time, money and lives. The push to adopt comprehensive electronic documentation between doctors' offices and hospital settings intensified after the RAND study of 2007. GE Healthcare's many Centricity product offerings enable and enhance the medical documentation, workflow, and data from physician's office, to large medical practice to enterprise-level hospitals and medical facilities.

4. A wide range of solutions to meet a variety of medical practice needs is Cerner Corporation's answer to the PMS requirements mix.  PowerWorks is the foundation program that supports 27 medical specialties, each adapting itself based on patient needs and the specific workflow of a particular practice. General modules range from Electronic Medical Record, that give clinicians give complete access to clinical information, to ePrescribe for prescription management. Claiming to have more than 6,000 clients worldwide, and 900 clinicians for input, Cerner Corporation, incorporated in 1980, offers applications developed around its Health Network Architecture (HNA). HNA allows clinics, hospitals, HMOs, physicians, and integrated health organizations (IHOs) to share clinical and management data across multiple disciplines and facilities.

Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSS)
Definition: Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSS) or Clinical Decision Support Software (CDS or CDSS) are interactive computer programs which are designed to assist physicians and other health professionals with decision making tasks. A clinician would interact with a CDSS at the point of care to help determine a patient’s diagnosis, analysis, etc.