Exploring User Interfaces for Search and Content Based Clinical Decision Support in Electronic Health Record Systems

Abstract

Both electronic health records (EHR) and clinical decision support (CDS)are each important attributions to clinicans and clinical workflow. Elec-tronic health records provide clinicans with crucial patient information atthe point of care, while clinical decision support gives well-founded and well-documented clinical recommendations at the point of decision making.This thesis explores how patient information from EHRs could be utilized as abasis for better and more effective decision support. Additionally, two meth-ods of accessing decision support recommendations are created and studied.One is based on search, with known elements from common general andmedical search interfaces. The other performs automatic ranking of relevantrecommendations based on patient information from a popular norwegianEHR system.To find out how these two prototypes should integrate and utilize informa-tion from an EHR system, an case-based experiment was conducted. Thisis a qualitative measure of user feedback, with elements from quantitativeresearch. User satisfaction were measured by using methods such as usertesting, interviews and surveys.User feedback suggest that clinical workflow have much to gain from integrat-ing EHR with CDS, as well as computerizing and making clinical nationalrecommendations available in an EHR context. It is also clear that elementslike search and automation are important features in an integrated system,and further research of decision support may include an integration of theseelements.