Clinical decision support system

Clinical (or diagnostic) decision support systems (CDSS) are interactive computer programs, which are designed to assist physicians and other health professionals with decision making tasks. A working definition has been proposed by Dr. Robert Hayward of the Centre for Health Evidence; "Clinical Decision Support systems link health observations with health knowledge to influence health choices by clinicians for improved health care". This definition has the advantage of simplifying Clinical Decision Support to a functional concept.

The basic components of a CDSS include a dynamic (medical) knowledge base and an inferencing mechanism (usually a set of rules derived from the experts and evidence-based medicine) and implemented through medical logic modules based on a language such as Arden syntax. It could be based on Expert systems or artificial neural networks or both (connectionist expert systems).