What is clinical decision support and how does it help patient care?

Clinical decision support typically refers to technology used to augment clinicians in complex decision making. Decision support technology helps practitioners make informed decisions and improves outcomes for patients.

How can clinical decision support help private GPs?

The latest electronic health records (also known as patient administration systems) contain inbuilt clinical decision support features. Example systems include EMIS Web and Systm1.

Within these products, example clinical decision support features include:

These are a few examples of many similar features that are built into the product. There is also a full ‘protocols’ tool that allows users to build and surface alerts based on specific customisable concepts. For example, for diabetics over age 50 (defined as a concept) a clinician can be forced to complete an annual blood pressure check when next consulting with the patient.

How can I start using clinical decision support?

EMIS Web includes clinical decision support, so any private GP service using EMIS will benefit from this feature.  

Why is it important?

Increased patient safety

Reducing clinician risk

Improving outcomes

Post a comment

Prev
Next

Have a question?

Submit your question here and we'll get our experts to review

Industry news

Keep up to date with the latest private general practice news, resources and systems.

Get the Beat

Our 1-minute newsletter, delivered monthly

Subscribe