Mobilizing clinical decision support to facilitate knowledge translation: a case study in China

Area of Science:

• Health Informatics
• Knowledge Management
• Clinical Decision Support Systems

Background:

• A significant gap exists between current medical knowledge and its application in clinical practice.
• Clinical decision support (CDS) systems are effective tools for delivering evidence-based knowledge to healthcare professionals.
• Efficient adoption of CDS systems is a key challenge in knowledge translation research.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a computer-aided knowledge translation method utilizing evidence-based decision support.
• To develop a robust knowledge representation model for centralized medical knowledge management.
• To create tools for rapid transformation of clinical evidence into computerized knowledge content.

Main Methods:

• Developed a knowledge representation model for coordinating diverse medical knowledge.
• Designed web-based authoring and natural language processing tools for knowledge acquisition.
• Implemented fundamental services like data acquisition and an inference engine for knowledge actuation.

Main Results:

• Constructed a computer-aided knowledge translation platform serving as a CDS infrastructure.
• Developed typical CDS applications on the platform.
• A drug use check case study showed significant physician revision of alerted orders (89.7%).

Conclusions:

• Computer-aided knowledge translation, facilitated by a CDS infrastructure, effectively supports evidence-based practice in clinical settings.
• The developed platform enables efficient knowledge management and dissemination.