Clinical decision support system

A clinical decision support system (CDSS) is a health information technology, provides clinicians, staff, patients, or other individuals with knowledge and person-specific information, intelligently filtered or presented at appropriate times, to enhance health and health care. CDS encompasses a variety of tools to enhance decision-making in the clinical workflow. These tools include computerized alerts and reminders to care providers and patients; clinical guidelines; condition-specific order sets; focused patient data reports and summaries; documentation templates; diagnostic support, and contextually relevant reference information, among other tools. A working definition has been proposed by Robert Hayward of the Centre for Health Evidence: "Clinical decision support systems link health observations with health knowledge to influence health choices by clinicians for improved health care". CDSSs constitute a major topic in artificial intelligence in medicine.