Clinical decision support system (CDSS) is an exclusive digital healthcare management software that is meant to assist hospitals and healthcare practitioners to better manage and analyze the patients’ records to be able to make better decisions.
In essence, the clinical decision support system isn’t just meant for the doctors or medical institutions, rather it also assists nurses, paramedic staff, patients, and even caregivers in improving the quality of healthcare services.
The clinical decision support system has been lauded as one of the most comprehensive forms of the digital health solution that enable digitalization of the medical operations, processes, and workflows, cutting in the errors and redundancies, while optimizing for the quality and efficiency of the healthcare services offered by hospitals and clinics.
The CDSS enables doctors, physicians, and other medical practitioners to have easy and quick access to patients’ medical records, which they can filter easily to find the most relevant information they want. The CDSS leverage advance analytical features and functionalities using machine learning algorithms to enhance the quality of the healthcare services, by giving doctors crucial insights and analytical updates for patients and helping them to make well-informed decisions. Apart from advanced analytical tools, the CDS system also automates various administrative tasks like appointment scheduling, billing information, alerts, reminders, and many more tasks to improve on the efficiency of the services, as well as, to save hospital costs on resources required to complete routine administrative tasks.
Benefits of Clinical Decision Support System
Some of the benefits of implementing CDSS for hospitals and medical institutions include:
- Integrating the workflow and processes
- Improving efficiency and productivity
- Development of a central data repository
- Delivering insightful analysis of patients’ records for doctors
- Improved healthcare services
- Increased profitability for hospitals and clinics
Some Successful Case Studies for the Clinical Decision Support System
Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS) has been successfully implemented in various hospitals and other healthcare institutions around the world to boost the performance of the service, enhance the workflow and processes, and increase the profitability of the institutions. Below are some of the successful clinical decision support system implementation case studies that signify the value of the CDS system for healthcare institutions:
- One hospital in Alabama, USA reduces the sepsis mortality rate over nearly 50% by implementing the automated surveillance algorithm. The powerful analytical algorithms implemented at the hospital was able to assist doctors in diagnosing the sepsis in patients; thus greatly improving the quality of the services offered by the doctors, as well as, greatly improving the chances for early diagnosis of the disease and thus saving lives
- Mayo Clinic is introducing an exclusive clinical decision support system for paramedic staff. The system is meant to assist nurses and paramedical staff in dealing with the patients who are looking for appointments and recommendations for doctors. The clinical decision support system being implemented in Mayo Clinic has a set of well-deigned questions that enable nurses to screen through the requests with a standardized approach and make well-informed decisions with minimal redundancies
- In a study conducted by Harvard University along with the Unity Health-White Country Medical Center, it was concluded that integration of the clinical decision support system with the telemedicine software can help lower the need of emergency visits by as much as over 40%, whereas, the readmission rates can be lowered by as much as 50%
- Mayo Clinic is yet another program in collaboration with the Yale has been developing a specialized clinical decision support system for patients dealing with head injuries. The system once implemented will be able to guide patients with head injuries with the best practices and make recommendations by analyzing the severity of the injury. The system won’t just help in offering faster healthcare services to the patients, by will also save thousands of dollars by lowering the number of unnecessary CT Scans.
- In yet another successful case study at the Department of Veteran Affairs, Indiana was able to lower the number of lab tests done by over 10% by implementing a clinical decision support system. The system wasn’t just able to lower the lab tests done by the patients but also saved over $150,000 to patients, while not compromising on the quality of the services offered.