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Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Clinical Decision Support (CDS) Connect Maintenance and Update

Project Final Report (PDF, 714.13 KB) Disclaimer

CDS Connect offers a public platform for authoring and sharing interoperable clinical decision support resources. Health information technology developers, clinical informaticists, and healthcare system leaders can leverage each other’s experiences and tools to reduce the burden of developing and implementing CDS, thus making it easier overall to advance evidence into clinical practice through CDS.

Project Details -
Completed

Beginning in 2016 with funding from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research (PCOR) Trust Fund, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality began a multi-component program aimed at advancing PCOR findings into practice through clinical decision support (CDS). One of these components is prototype web-based infrastructure, called CDS Connect. CDS Connect matches CDS developers interested in sharing and disseminating CDS with CDS implementers who may re-use the tools for further innovation and local adaptation. The platform includes a public repository of CDS artifacts, a CDS authoring tool, and multiple open-source software packages. CDS Connect and its tools aim to make CDS more shareable, interoperable, and publicly available. This research will maintain and continue the work of the CDS Connect platform, including its repository, its public work group, and open-source tools.

The specific aims of the research are to:

  • Ensure the platform is current with standards and guidelines. 
  • Continue the CDS Connect Work Group. 
  • Develop recommendations for future functionality. 
  • Provide a forum for CDS Connect users. 

The research will keep the platform current with health information technology (IT) standards and with clinical care recommendations for those artifacts developed within the work. Health IT standards relevant to CDS will be used, including Health Level 7 (HL7) Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) and Clinical Quality Language (CQL), among others. Artifacts developed to date have focused on specific use cases and pilot demonstrations in the domains of cholesterol management, chronic pain management, and preventive care.

The CDS Connect Work Group will continue to meet and provide feedback and direction to the effort. The work group will discuss recently adopted features, make recommendations on future functionality, and provide a forum for CDS Connect users to present to each other on how they have used the platforms tools and resources. In addition, the work group will suggest enhancements and priorities to foster trustworthy sharing of CDS and to incorporate attributes of the Trust Framework developed by the Patient-Centered CDS Learning Network.