Importance

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Abstract

A decision support system for the selection of a diagnostic or therapeutic test or intervention, herein called studies, is supported by identifying a relative number of cases in which significant results were obtained in studies having the same indications. In particular, an ordering physician requests a study for a patient and specifies indications for the study, such as symptoms and a potential diagnosis. The number of studies performed, including those on other patients, for which results were significant for the same indications out of the total number of studies performed for the same indications is provided as feedback to the ordering physician. This feedback relates actual patient results to the appropriateness of the study. A decision support system in a health care information management system receives, from an ordering physician, an order for a study to be performed on a specified patient and indications for the study. The received indications for the selected study are used to access a database of result codes for previous studies having the same indications, including studies performed on other patients. A result of the comparison of the selected study and specified indications to the result codes database is then sent to the ordering physician. Decision support may be enhanced by using data extracted from existing scientific literature. In one embodiment, the decision support system is part of a health care management system that supports structured order entry for use by the ordering physician and a structured data entry module for entering result codes into the database.

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First Claim