Clinical decision support system with temporal context

Abstract

A clinical decision support system (CDSS) includes a CDSS module (20) comprising a digital processing device (10) configured to store patient data (34) and a clinical guideline (22). The clinical guideline comprises connected nodes representing clinical workflow events, actions, or decisions, wherein contiguous groups of the nodes are grouped into care phases (40). The CDSS module is configured to associate patient data with patient care phases selected from the care phases of the clinical guideline, and determine patient care phase time intervals for the patient care phases based on acquisition date information for the patient data associated with the patient care phases. The selected patient care phase may be a care phase associated with a clinical guideline node associated with the new patient data, or may be a patient care phase that is consistent with the acquisition date for the new patient data.

Description

technical field [0001] The present invention relates to the medical field, the clinical field, the medical diagnostic field, the patient care field and related fields. Background technique [0002] A clinical decision support system (CDSS) is an interactive electronic system that provides guidance to physicians or other medical personnel in diagnosing and managing patients. One type of CDSS is defined by a clinical guideline that can be viewed as a directed graph of nodes, where each node represents an action to be taken (such as a medical test or treatment to be performed) or a decision to be made. A decision node is typically a branch point in a directed graph, where the branches that follow a decision node depend on the decision made at the decision node. Clinical guidelines can be highly specialized (targeting a specific medical condition) or more general (covering a range of medical conditions by using appropriate decision nodes). More general clinical guidelines are ...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

[0005] The complexity of clinical guidelines and the somewhat ad hoc nature of patient data collection and entry into the CDSS can greatly reduce the effectiveness of the CDSS in providing a rapid and accurate assessment of the patient's current clinical status

For example, in the previous tumor example, if a positive test indicative of malignancy was acquired during the first (therapeutic) radiation treatment, but was not entered into the CDSS until the patient had progressed to the second (precautionary) radiation treatment , the physician may misinterpret the test result as indicating a recurrence of the malignancy in question

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