Role of Online Knowledge Resources in Clinical Decision Making

임상 의사 결정에서 온라인 지식 자원의 역할

The need of Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS) in healthcare setup is increasing day by day. EHR Meaningful Use advocates CDSS as an important component of EHR/EMR systems. CDSS can be ranged from a simple to a very sophisticated system. The more complex CDSS systems need more attention to develop because of many reasons including its Knowledge Base (KB) structure/maintenance/evolution, inference capabilities and usability. Above all the KB maintenance and evolution is very crucial and important from the perspective of useful decision capabilities. Also the richness of the KB is important to cover the decision gaps handling a particular situation in the course of patient care. It cannot be expected from the clinicians to remember everything in regard to patient diagnosis and treatment. Similarly, it is also crucial for clinicians to keep themselves updated with the new research in the area. That is the reason they frequently require accessing to the online knowledge resources. Literature proved that online knowledge resources are capable providing answers to questions that might not be answered rely only on clinician wisdom and experience. This paper provides the theme of meaningful utilization of online knowledge resources in the context of diagnosis and treatment process for cancer patients more specifically Head and Neck cancer.