Clinical Decision Support System features

• 
  Knowledge-based – organized by decision frames
  
• 
  Logic algorithms expressed in text easily understood by clinicians
  
• 
  Data-driven – items with modifiers for searching patient records
  
• 
  Structured vocabulary for uniform data representation^[1]
  

HELP is a knowledge-based hospital information system (HIS) [3]. In addition to the HIS routine work, HELP has a robust decision-making function which is fully incorporated into the system. The decision support function can provide alerts/reminders, data interpretation, patient diagnosis and management suggestions, etc.

In 2013, IHC and the Cerner Corporation announced a partnership that will lead to the implementation of the Cerner system across all Intermountain hospitals and clinics. This system will include the existing clinical decision support and process care models. The new system will also be integrated with the electronic data warehouse that currently exists at IHC. The original timeline aimed for this transition to be completed across all IHC facilities by the end of 2015. [5]

Evaluation of HELP System

HELP has been evaluated in several ways. Some of the examples of these evaluations which demonstrate the applicability of this system in different contexts, follow:

User Acceptance

User questionnaires in the early 1990's from 246 physicians and 374 nurses revealed several findings that encouraged development of medical expert systems contradicting concern that these types of systems would not be appreciated or utilized [1]. These findings were:

1. 
   There was no correlation between age, specialty or general computer experience of the individuals with their attitudes about the HELP system.
   
2. 
   Users did not feel that the system would cause a "big brother" concern of external monitoring or sanctions.
   
3. 
   Computer decision support did not seem to diminish their decision making authority.
   
4. 
   Feedback from questionnaires provided the need for future system upgrades and rollouts.