Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSSs): State of the art Review of Literature

Abstract

<strong>Introduction:</strong> One of the major advances in medical practice and healthcare is to incorporate decision support systems (DSS) in such practices to assist healthcare staff. The present study aimed to make a general understanding framework about the state of the art of the clinical decision support systems (CDSS). <strong>Methods:</strong> The design of this was a systematic review. According to the research keywords (decision, decision-making, clinical decision, clinical decision-making, decision support, decision support system, clinical decision support system), Persian and English papers and scientific literature in scientific data bases include Simorgh, MagIran, and SID for Persian, as well as Science Direct, Google Scholar, Google Patent, Wikipedia, PubMed, Sage, and Springer for English resources were searched. At the end, among 1247 papers, 27 papers were selected regarding the inclusion criteria. Delphi method was implemented to construct the final format of the results report. The method of the data analysis were librarian and content analysis. <strong>Results:</strong> Two main definitions of CDSS, 13 popular CDSSs, major aims of usage, practical and theoretical benefits, principal methods of decision support, three major classifications, medical/clinical data mining, EBM, and efficacy of CDSS have been evaluated and discussed. <strong>Conclusion:</strong> The usage of CDSS in clinical and healthcare settings is increasing. It has been shown that the incorporation of CDSS can significantly improve health outcome indices. However, authorities shall establish standards and quality control systems to evaluate and integrate development and implementation procedures of CDSS. In addition, future studies would better compare alike CDSS to evaluate competitive advantages and concurrent validity of various CDSSs.