Rule-Based Decision Support Tools Available on LISs for Decades

In my note of two days ago, I discussed how Mayo Clinic has developed a decision support and report generation tool calledCareSelect Lab in collaboration with a company called the National Decision Support. The system is deployed on the EHR side (see:Mayo Develops CareSelect Tool to Guide Best Lab Practices for Clinicians).I went on to point out that the tool performs functions such as flagging obsolete tests and clarifying confusing test names. It can also generate standardized reports of test utilization by hospital physicians. I went on to say the following:"Lab professionals have been trying to inform clinicians about duplicate testing and comparing physician test-ordering practices for decades with variable degrees of success in changing test ordering habits." I thought that it might be appropriate to provide more detail about this statement.For perhaps thirty years, LIS vendors have provided the capability for lab professionals to create rules that could scan lab test orders and the lab database to generate if-then actions and reports very similar to the described capabilities of Mayo's CareSelect Lab. Cerner, which launched as an LIS vendor, even created a specific language calledCerner Command Language (CCL) that was used to create such rules (see: Cerner CCL). Here is a paragraph describing CCL from the Wikipedia:Cerner CCL (Cerner Command Language) is the Cerner Corporation fourth-generation program...
Source: Lab Soft News - Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Tags: Clinical Lab Industry News Clinical Lab Testing Electronic Health Record (EHR) Healthcare Information Technology Lab Industry Trends Lab Information LIS Definitions and Strategy LIS Vendor News Pathology Informatics Source Type: blogs