Summary The objective of this research was to design a clinical decision support system (CDSS) that supports heterogeneous clinical decision problems and runs on multiple computing platforms. Meeting this objective required a novel design to create an extendable and easy to maintain clinical CDSS for point of care support. The proposed solution was evaluated in a proof of concept implementation. Based on our earlier research with the design of a mobile CDSS for emergency triage we used ontology driven design to represent essential components of a CDSS. Models of clinical decision problems were derived from the ontology and they were processed into executable applications during run time. This allowed scaling applications' functionality to the capabilities of computing platforms. A prototype of the system was implemented using the extended client-sever architecture and Web services to distribute the functions of the system and to make it operational in limited connectivity conditions. The proposed design provided a common framework that facilitated development of diversified clinical applications running seamlessly on a variety of computing platforms. It was prototyped for two clinical decision problems and settings (triage of acute pain in the emergency department and postoperative management of radical prostatectomy on the hospital ward) and implemented on two computing platforms -desktop and handheld computers. The requirement of the CDSS heterogeneity was satisfied with ontology driven design. Processing of application models described with the help of ontological models allowed having a complex system running on multiple computing platforms with different capabilities. Finally, separation of model and runtime components contributed to improved maintainability -changes in runtime components did not require changing the application models. Keywords decision support systems, clinical; point of care systems; software design; ontology driven design 3
Farion et al. REF used ontology-driven design to represent components of a CDSS.
Clinical Decision Support System for Point of Care Use : Ontology Driven Design and Software Implementation
Methods of information in medicine
Methods of information in medicine
Computer Science Medicine