title: Workflow technology to enrich a computerized clinical chart with decision support facilities.
abstract: Literature results and personal experience show that intrusive modalities of presenting suggestions of computerized clinical practice guidelines are detrimental to the routine use of an information system. This paper describes a solution for smoothly integrating a guideline-based decision support system into an existing computerized clinical chart for patients admitted to a Stroke Unit. Since many years, the healthcare personnel were using a commercial product for the ordinary patients' data management, and they were satisfied with it. Thus, the decision support system has been integrated keeping attention to minimize changes and preserve existing human-computer interaction. Our decision support system is based on workflow technology. The paper illustrates the middleware layer developed to allow communication between the workflow management system and the clinical chart. At the same time, the consequent modification of the graphical users' interface is illustrated.
authors.affiliation: CBIM Consorzio di Biogegneria e Informatica, Medica-Pavia, Italy. silvia.panzarasa@unipv.it
authors.forename: Silvia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Panzarasa
authors.forename: Silvana
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Quaglini
authors.forename: Anna
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Cavallini
authors.forename: Giuseppe
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Micieli
authors.forename: Corrado
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Pernice
authors.forename: Mauro
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Pessina
authors.forename: Mario
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Stefanelli
mesh_terms: D020000:Decision Support Systems, Clinical; D006801:Humans; D016347:Medical Records Systems, Computerized; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic; D012984:Software; D020521:Stroke / Q000517:prevention & control / Q000628:therapy*; D018511:Systems Integration; D013813:Therapy, Computer-Assisted; D014584:User-Computer Interface