A post by Andrew Barna

“Each of us needs to know what the best of us knows.”

What a great and necessary mantra for healthcare today. Do we not all want the best care with the most up-to-date techniques and interventions? People make pilgrimages to centers of excellence across the country to see that one specialist at the forefront of research on their particular condition. And yet that statement is loaded with challenges. How do we capture the latest medical research in a useable format? How do we transfer that knowledge? How do we put it into the right people’s hands at just the right time to influence a treatment decision? How will we know when the system works?

That is the promise and challenge of Clinical Decision Support (CDS). And that quotation comes from the Roadmap for National Action on Clinical Decision Support, which was put together by the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA). The roadmap identifies a framework for the nation-wide implementation of CDS.

The roadmap is interesting and I will certainly watch this project develop, but the coolest item the AMIA released with the report are the pictures by the workshop facilitator. These illustrations give the public a window into the process that lead up to this report. The illustrations bring together an array of concepts and new relationships. For me, the illustrations capture the possibilities and opportunities for healthcare in a way that reports can’t.

On a seperate note, congratulations to Tony on the birth of his son. I hope that your wife and baby are doing well.