Playing in the clinical decision support sandbox: tools and training for all

Andrey Soares; Majid Afshar; Chris Moesel; Michael A Grasso; Eric Pan; Anthony Solomonides; Joshua E Richardson; Eleanor Barone; Edwin A Lomotan; Lisa M Schilling

doi:10.1093/jamiaopen/ooad038

Playing in the clinical decision support sandbox: tools and training for all

JAMIA Open. 2023 Jun 21;6(2):ooad038. doi: 10.1093/jamiaopen/ooad038. eCollection 2023 Jul.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Division of General Internal Medicine, Department of Medicine, and the Data Science to Patient Value Initiative, School of Medicine, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, Aurora, Colorado, USA.
² Department of Medicine, School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Wisconsin Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, USA.
³ Open Health Solutions Department, The MITRE Corporation, Bedford, Massachusetts, USA.
⁴ University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
⁵ Westat Inc, Center for Healthcare Delivery Research and Evaluation, Rockville, Maryland, USA.
⁶ Outcomes Research Network, Research Institute, NorthShore University HealthSystem, Evanston, Illinois, USA.
⁷ Center for Health Informatics and Evidence Synthesis, RTI International, Chicago, Illinois, USA.
⁸ Office of Health Informatics/Clinical Informatics and Data Management Organization, Veteran's Affairs, Fayetteville, North Carolina, USA.
⁹ Center for Evidence and Practice Improvement, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, Maryland, USA.

Abstract

Objectives: Introduce the CDS-Sandbox, a cloud-based virtual machine created to facilitate Clinical Decision Support (CDS) developers and implementers in the use of FHIR- and CQL-based open-source tools and technologies for building and testing CDS artifacts.

Materials and methods: The CDS-Sandbox includes components that enable workflows for authoring and testing CDS artifacts. Two workshops at the 2020 and 2021 AMIA Annual Symposia were conducted to demonstrate the use of the open-source CDS tools.

Results: The CDS-Sandbox successfully integrated the use of open-source CDS tools. Both workshops were well attended. Participants demonstrated use and understanding of the workshop materials and provided positive feedback after the workshops.

Discussion: The CDS-Sandbox and publicly available tutorial materials facilitated an understanding of the leading-edge open-source CDS infrastructure components.

Conclusion: The CDS-Sandbox supports integrated use of the key CDS open-source tools that may be used to introduce CDS concepts and practice to the clinical informatics community.

Keywords: CDS Hooks; CQL; FHIR; clinical decision support.