By Richard Pizzi, Contributing Editor
CHICAGO — As HIMSS09 kicks off April 5th attendees will get a chance to learn about the latest in clinical decision support research from three experts in the field.
In a special “Views from the Top” session titled “AHRQ Clinical Decision Support Consortium” Sunday at 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM, the panelists will discuss best practices for clinical decision support and knowledge management, and contrast CDS ideals with current practice.
The panelists – Blackford Middleton, MD, MPH, MSc of Partners Healthcare System; Dean Sittig, PhD, of the Memorial Hermann Center for Healthcare Quality & Safety at the University of Texas; and Frank Sonnenberg, MD, professor of medicine at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey – intend to help attendees better understand the potential of clinical decision support to improve the quality and safety of healthcare.
“We will report on the current progress of the Clinical Decision Support Consortium,” said Middleton. “A key goal of the project is to create a prototype national knowledge repository that would make core knowledge for clinical decision support available to all who are implementing EMRs and other healthcare IT.”
The CDS Consortium is led by researchers from Harvard University and Partners Healthcare in Boston, in collaboration with the Veterans Affairs, Kaiser Permanente, The Oregon Health and Science University, the University of Texas-Houston, the Regenstrief Institute, as well as vendors GE, Siemens and NextGen.
According to Sittig, clinical knowledge management is one of the most important aspects of any long-term CDS effort. “Clinical knowledge management includes all aspects of the clinical decision support design, development, testing, implementation, maintenance and evaluation processes,” he said. ”I will be discussing some of the key lessons learned over the past year in our research regarding best practices for clinical knowledge management.”