Increasing and standardizing quality of care using computerized guidelines for clinical decision support

In recent decades there has been strong orientation toward greater use of evidence-based medicine approaches and information technology in the provision of personalized healthcare services. The chapter introduces the use of clinical practice guidelines to increase the accessibility of scientific evidence to healthcare professionals and patients. It describes application frameworks and the life cycle of the creation of computerized guidelines to facilitate clinical decision support. Examples are focused on development of computerized guidelines for preeclampsia and heart failure that support automatic inference and patient-specific advice delivered at the point of care. In the preeclampsia scenario, assessments were made regarding the feasibility of application of formalized clinical guidelines, improvement of physician compliance with guidelines, and whether clinicians considered the framework for guidelines application helpful. The heart failure scenario demonstrated the modified knowledge acquisition methodology that resulted in formalized guideline with 167 recommendations for heart failure application in home care.