AHRQ awards millions for clinical-decision support systems

If you attend a health IT conference, you'll hear much earnest discussion over the role of clinical support in daily medical practices--with some doctors actually downplaying its importance and others (mostly administrators) stressing its benefits. Well, here's one more opportunity to see how it plays out. Two academic medical centers have been awarded contracts worth a total of $5 million by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to develop clinical decision-support tools. One grant goes to 746-bed Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, and the other to Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, CT. The two organizations will be tasked with integrating clinical-decision support into standard health IT products, drawing on lessons learned from prior implementations to IT vendors. The idea is to translate clinical guidelines and outcomes related to preventive care and chronic illness management, as well as look at how providers use decision-support.

Ultimately, the research will assess the pros and cons of clinical decision support services--some of which clinicians find cumbersome--and look at their effects on patient satisfaction, care efficiency, cost and risk.

To learn more about the grants:
- read this Modern Healthcare piece

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