Introduction
Clinical decision support (CDS) systems provideclinicians, staff, patients, and other
individuals with knowledge and person-specific information, intelligently filtered and presented
at appropriate times, to enhance health and health care.
1
The Institute of Medicine has long
recognized problems with health care quality in the United States, and for more than a decade
has advocated using health information technology (IT), including electronic CDS, to improve
quality.
2-5
Since 2004, when the Federal Government promoted the importance of electronic
medical records (EMRs),
*
there has been a slow but increasing adoption of health IT.
7-9
It must
be remembered, though, that these health IT applications are a means to improve health care
quality, not an end in themselves.
10
Further, although EMRs with computerized provider order
entry (CPOE) can improve accessibility and legibility of information, it is unlikely that there will
be major improvements in the quality and cost ofcare from the use of health IT without proper
implementation and use of CDS.
11-15
To illustrate this point, imagine the following scenario:
While his doctor is out-of-town, an elderly asthma patient who has developed severe knee
pain sees another physician in his doctor’s office. An EMR provided documentation of the last
visit, including recent laboratory results and a list of the patient’s medications. This information
easily brought the doctor up to date on the patient’s condition. The doctor entered an order for
medicine for the knee pain into the system, printed out a (legible) prescription for the patient, and
sent him on his way. Unfortunately, within 2 months, the patient wound up in the emergency
room with a bleeding ulcer caused by interaction of the pain medicine with the patient’s asthma
medicine.
Problems of this kind occur frequently, as documented in reports from the Institute of
Medicine.
4,5,16
Any of several types of CDS tools could have prevented this patient’s drug
interaction. Examples include a pop-up alert to the potential drug interaction when the doctor
prescribed the new medicine; clinical prediction rules to assess the risks of the pain medication
for this patient; clinical guidelines for treatment of asthma; or reminders for timely followup.
This scenario illustrates that EMRs are the foundation for patient safety and health care quality
improvement, but CDS is an essential element in fully realizing these goals.
This review presents a summary of the state ofthe art of electronic CDS for clinicians. It
includes background information on the types of CDS and focuses on the outcomes of deploying
these CDS interventions. It also discusses the major issues and challenges of CDS
implementation and evaluation. After reviewing what is known about implementing CDS, the
impact from its use, and the knowledge gaps thatremain, the review examines factors that can
facilitate broader use of CDS, including the role of various stakeholders in influencing CDS
adoption. This review uses both the peer-reviewed literature on implementation and outcomes of
*
Recent consensus definitions have made a distinction between EHRs (electronic health records,
records that span organizations), and EMRs (electronic medical records thatcontain information from a single
organization).
6
As technology develops there will likely be moredevelopment of EHRs, but since EMRs are more
common today the term EMR will be used throughout this paper.
4