Patient facing decision support system for interpretation of laboratory test results

Abstract

BackgroundIn some healthcare systems, it is common that patients address laboratory test centers directly without a physician’s recommendation. This practice is widely spread in Russia with about 28% of patients who visiting laboratory test centers for diagnostics. This causes an issue when patients get no help from the physician in understanding the results.Computer decision support systems proved to efficiently solve a resource consuming task of interpretation of the test results. So, a decision support system can be implemented to rise motivation and empower the patients who visit a laboratory service without a doctor’s referral.MethodsWe have developed a clinical decision support system for patients that solves a classification task and finds a set of diagnoses for the provided laboratory tests results.The Wilson and Lankton’s assessment model was applied to measure patients’ acceptance of the solution.ResultsA first order predicates-based decision support system has been implemented to analyze laboratory test results and deliver reports in natural language to patients. The evaluation of the system showed a high acceptance of the decision support system and of the reports that it generates.ConclusionsDetailed notification of the laboratory service patients with elements of the decision support is significant for the laboratory data management, and for patients’ empowerment and safety.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12911-018-0648-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Study of patients' attitude to automatic interpretation of laboratory test results and its influence on follow-up rate

“…A clinical decision support system [ 15 ], which was used in the study is a patient oriented system that provides interpretations of laboratory test results (Table 1 ). The CDSS is not certified as a medical device.…”

“…There is no certification scheme yet in Russia. The clinical validation was done and published previously [ 15 ].…”

How Laboratory Information System Improves Patient Safety

“…A decision support function for patients has been investigated with promising results. There is high acceptance rate of patients with better patient engagement and safety [13]. LIS provides better documentation and allows possible data mining [14].…”

Experience in Developing an FHIR Medical Data Management Platform to Provide Clinical Decision Support

“…clinical decisions [6,7]. This definition demonstrates the variety and evolution of clinical decision support from small, focused applications to large-scale platforms capable of storing and managing medical data to assist doctors and patients by delivering recommendations [8,9].To provide efficient decision support, it is necessary to integrate CDSSs in information systems routinely operated by healthcare professionals, such as hospital information systems (HIS), or by patients deploying their personal health records (PHRs) [10]. CDSSs should be able to use the semantics and the clinical context of the data that were imported from other systems and data repositories [11][12][13].Semantic interoperability becomes a key issue when it comes to communication between heterogeneous information systems [14].…”

“…To provide efficient decision support, it is necessary to integrate CDSSs in information systems routinely operated by healthcare professionals, such as hospital information systems (HIS), or by patients deploying their personal health records (PHRs) [10]. CDSSs should be able to use the semantics and the clinical context of the data that were imported from other systems and data repositories [11][12][13].…”