Medical informatics and pediatrics. Decision-support systems
K. B. Johnson and M. J. Feldman
Department of Pediatrics, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, Md, USA.
Decision support is an important area of medical informatics research.
Computer-based decision-support tools facilitate diagnosis and the
management of patients after a diagnosis has been established. Diagnostic
decision-support tools, such as Meditel, Quick Medical Reference, DXplain,
Iliad, and PEM-DXP are potentially useful "expert systems." Other
management-support tools, such as systems that use clinical practice
guidelines to create reminders and alerts, also have been developed and
evaluated. We do the following: (1) to provide an overview of diagnostic
and management decision-support systems; (2) explore the background of and
motivation behind these systems; (3) survey the uses of decision-support
technology in office-based and inpatient pediatric practices; and (4)
discuss the virtues and problems associated with some of these tools, and
current controversies and future goals for computer-based decision support.
