To Share is Human! Advancing Evidence into Practice through a National Repository of Interoperable Clinical Decision...

Area of Science:

• Health Informatics
• Clinical Decision Support Systems
• Knowledge Management in Healthcare

Background:

• Healthcare systems invest heavily in developing clinical decision support (CDS) independently, leading to resource duplication.
• Sharing knowledge about translating evidence-based practice into CDS, including workflow and technical details, could enhance efficiency and reduce redundancy.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe how a national repository of CDS knowledge artifacts can serve as a public resource.
• To facilitate sharing and reuse of CDS artifacts among healthcare systems, researchers, and informaticists.

Main Methods:

• Evaluation of the CDS Connect platform, launched by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) in 2016.
• Collection of user experiences from AHRQ-sponsored and community-led dissemination efforts.
• Quantitative and qualitative analysis of platform site metrics to assess early use and impact.

Main Results:

• Over 50 CDS entries contributed by federal agencies, academic institutions, and others to CDS Connect.
• Analysis indicates shared CDS resources reduce team size, tasks, and time for design, development, and deployment.
• Benefits include inspiring new projects, identifying collaborators, and improving artifacts through feedback; organizations adapt content for research and local implementation.

Conclusions:

• CDS Connect functions as a platform for active sharing of CDS development work.
• Sharing CDS knowledge artifacts can improve implementation efficiency through various pathways.
• Ongoing research aims to quantify the efficiencies gained from leveraging shared CDS artifacts.