A Medical Device Daily

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality said it has awarded $5 million for two new health information technology contracts that will focus on the development and implementation of best practices using clinical decision support.

The Brigham and Women’s Hospital (Boston) and Yale University School of Medicine (New Haven, Connecticut) have been selected to incorporate clinical decision support into widely used health IT products. The projects will focus on translation of clinical guidelines and outcomes related to preventive health care and treatment of patients with multiple chronic illnesses. Clinicians’ use of clinical decision support also will be evaluated.

The projects will implement clinical decision support tools in products certified by the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (Chicago) and will apply guidelines set by the Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel of the American National Standards Institute (Washington).

The research will assess potential benefits and drawbacks of clinical decision support services, including patient satisfaction, measures of efficiency, cost and risk. Researchers also will evaluate methods of creating, storing and replicating clinical decision support elements across multiple clinical sites and ambulatory practices.