Playing in the clinical decision support sandbox: tools and training for all

Area of Science:

• Clinical Informatics
• Health IT Development

Background:

• Clinical Decision Support (CDS) systems are crucial for improving healthcare.
• Developing and testing CDS artifacts requires specialized tools and environments.
• Open-source technologies like FHIR and CQL are increasingly important in CDS development.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce the CDS-Sandbox, a cloud-based virtual machine.
• To facilitate the use of FHIR- and CQL-based open-source tools for CDS development and testing.
• To support developers and implementers in building and validating CDS artifacts.

Main Methods:

• The CDS-Sandbox was developed with integrated components for authoring and testing CDS artifacts.
• Two workshops were conducted at the AMIA Annual Symposia (2020, 2021) to demonstrate open-source CDS tools.
• Tutorial materials were made publicly available.

Main Results:

• The CDS-Sandbox successfully integrated key open-source CDS tools.
• Workshops were well-attended, with participants demonstrating understanding of the materials.
• Positive participant feedback was received following the workshops.

Conclusions:

• The CDS-Sandbox effectively supports the integrated use of essential open-source CDS tools.
• Publicly available tutorial materials enhanced understanding of CDS infrastructure components.
• The platform can introduce CDS concepts and practices to the clinical informatics community.