What Is a Clinical Decision Support System?

A clinical decision support system (CDSS) is a form of computer software designed to help users sort through data and make decisions. It is designed to be used by health care professionals and is commonly used today in the medical field. These systems have been championed by doctors and other medical professionals in recent years for the accuracy and effectiveness of the help they provide.

Doctors may use a clinical decision support system to input information on a patient. This system can work together with modeling software to create a three dimensional representation of the patient. Doctors can then use this representation and with other features of the software to test various options for treatment.

A clinical decision support system will also store information on the patient. This can help the doctor to make decisions based on the patient’s medical history. Additional information stored on the CDSS includes a database of medical knowledge. These two information sources can be studied both by the doctor and the clinical decision support system itself in order to make an informed decision.

When a clinical decision support system interacts with the Internet it can be even more helpful for doctors and other medical workers. These systems can sometimes allow professionals to communicate with doctors and physicians with specialized skills or extensive knowledge of a certain branch of medicine for better diagnosis and treatment. A doctor can even order medicine for a patient online through a clinical decision support system which helps ensure the patient gets the right kind of medicine, the right dosage, and has easily understandable instructions for how to use it.

Even medical professionals who are more involved in the administrative branch of a hospital have many uses for a CDSS. It makes it easier for them to document a hospital’s procedures and to catalog and refer to them. When they need to authorize a high risk procedure all the information they would need to consider is presented to them in an easily understandable way. Also, the process of referring a patient to see a specialist is made easier with the patient’s information condensed and stored in an easily accessible and understandable way.

The benefits of a clinical decision support system are clear and the doctors who have used one of these systems support their increased use. It is likely that more systems will be implemented in hospitals and medical offices. These systems will help everyone involved in healthcare, from doctors, to patients, to administrators and more.