Creating and sharing clinical decision support content with Web 2.0: Issues and examples

  • Authors:

  • Adam Wright;David W. Bates;Blackford Middleton;Tonya Hongsermeier;Vipul Kashyap;Sean M. Thomas;Dean F. Sittig

  • Affiliations:

  • Clinical Informatics Research & Development, Partners HealthCare System, 93 Worcester St., Wellesely, Boston, MA 02481, USA and Division of General Medicine, Brigham & Women's Hospital, Boston, MA ...;Division of General Medicine, Brigham & Women's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA and Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA and Clinical and Quality Analysis, Partners HealthCare ...;Clinical Informatics Research & Development, Partners HealthCare System, 93 Worcester St., Wellesely, Boston, MA 02481, USA and Division of General Medicine, Brigham & Women's Hospital, Boston, MA ...;Clinical Informatics Research & Development, Partners HealthCare System, 93 Worcester St., Wellesely, Boston, MA 02481, USA;Clinical Informatics Research & Development, Partners HealthCare System, 93 Worcester St., Wellesely, Boston, MA 02481, USA;Epic Systems Corporation, Verona, WI, USA;UT-Memorial Hermann Center for Healthcare Quality and Safety, Houston, TX, USA and The University of Texas School of Health Information Sciences at Houston, TX, USA

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Biomedical Informatics
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

Clinical decision support is a powerful tool for improving healthcare quality and patient safety. However, developing a comprehensive package of decision support interventions is costly and difficult. If used well, Web 2.0 methods may make it easier and less costly to develop decision support. Web 2.0 is characterized by online communities, open sharing, interactivity and collaboration. Although most previous attempts at sharing clinical decision support content have worked outside of the Web 2.0 framework, several initiatives are beginning to use Web 2.0 to share and collaborate on decision support content. We present case studies of three efforts: the Clinfowiki, a world-accessible wiki for developing decision support content; Partners Healthcare eRooms, web-based tools for developing decision support within a single organization; and Epic Systems Corporation's Community Library, a repository for sharing decision support content for customers of a single clinical system vendor. We evaluate the potential of Web 2.0 technologies to enable collaborative development and sharing of clinical decision support systems through the lens of three case studies; analyzing technical, legal and organizational issues for developers, consumers and organizers of clinical decision support content in Web 2.0. We believe the case for Web 2.0 as a tool for collaborating on clinical decision support content appears strong, particularly for collaborative content development within an organization.