Clinical Decision Support Systems for ‘Making It Easy to Do It Right’

Medical guidelines and best practises are used in medicine to increase the quality of the health-care delivery system. To support implementation and application of these guidelines, clinical decision support systems (CDSS) have been developed. These systems are defined as ‘Computer-based information systems used to integrate clinical and patient information and provide support for decision-making in patient care’ (MeSH) These are integrated with so-called Electronic Health Records (EHR), which have been developed by companies and National Governmental Institutes, and are used to register and present the patient medical data. The integration of an EHR with CDSS modules will revolutionize the way medicine will be practiced. In pediatrics, as well as geriatrics, such systems might prove to be even more needed. The development, use, and maintenance of CDSS in a hospital are complex and far from trivial. This chapter focuses on several aspects and challenges of EHR’s and CDSS-modules in daily clinical practice in the hospital.