A computer-based Decision Support System (CDSS) has yielded a significant impact on the administrative setup of the health care industry. As machines have been used to monitor the performance of the human body and have provided support of the highest level to doctors and clinicians, the use of CDSS takes this step a bit further as it would help the clinician in making more informed decisions while helping the patient.
At the same time, patients could also get machine-based suggestions while asking for an appointment with a doctor for the cure of certain diseases or symptoms. The effective use of DSS has helped clinicians in the diagnosis and consistent planning of treatments being made available to the patients. General practitioners have found its usage in the form of expert or specialized knowledge being provided by the system from a wide-ranging set of data and content. Recommendations made by DSS could help in ensuring a minimum standard quality of care for patients by following practice guidelines in conjunction with the use of extensive medical records. The most significant contribution of DSS for clinical purposes is that of its potential as for their potential as a tool that can result in a drastic reduction in medical errors and hence appreciable increase in quality as well as efficiency of health care activities.
At the same time, the other most commendable support that one could envision is in the domain of evidence-based medicine. The use of DSS, in this case, actually refers to the practice of medicine that relies on the basis formulated through available scientific evidence. The adaptive evidence DSS focuses on up-to-date evidence from the research literature and practice-based sources. This aspect can be well understood through the support that DSS provides in cancer treatment. The clinicians are being made aware of drug-drug interactions that have their origin through evidence-based research work. Technically, the limitation of a DSS is that of the deficiencies in the research process through which the results have been achieved. The effectiveness of the DSS is an amalgamated product of the quality of the research evidence as well as the useful and actionable evidence that could easily be made accessible and machine-interpretable.
CDSS can also provide able support in the management and tracking of care providers and overall cost of medical services, and appointment scheduling, and above all, capturing and managing accurate audit data. CDSS based management solution might add some extra expense, but this cost for optimal management could be offset through the involving junior staff backed with an able CDSS for managing lesser complex problems. Decision Support System can also help in digging out the best service through suggestions based on experience and competency of a medical practitioner for specific diseases.