title: Architecture of a decision support system to improve clinicians' interpretation of abnormal liver function tests.
abstract: The objective of this work was to create a self-working computerized clinical decision support system (CDSS) able to analyze liver function tests (LFTs) in order to provide diagnostic suggestions and helpful care support to clinicians. We developed an expert system that processes exclusively para-clinical information to provide diagnostic propositions. Drugs are a major issue in dealing with abnormal LFTs, therefore we created a drug-disease causality assessment tool to include drugs in the differential diagnosis. Along with the results, the CDSS will guide clinicians in the care process offering them case-specific support in the form of guidelines, order sets and references to recent articles. The CDSS will be implemented in Geneva University Hospitals clinical information system (CIS) during year 2011. For the time being, preliminary tests have been conducted on case reports chosen randomly on Pubmed. Considered as medical challenges, case reports were nevertheless processed correctly by the program to the extent that 18 cases out of 20 were diagnosed accurately.
authors: Division of Medical Information Sciences, Geneva University Hospitals. raphael.chevrier.ch@gmail.com
authors: Raphaël
authors: R
authors: Chevrier
authors: David
authors: D
authors: Jaques
authors: Christian
authors: C
authors: Lovis
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D020000:Decision Support Systems, Clinical / Q000458:organization & administration*; D019937:Diagnostic Techniques and Procedures; D064420:Drug-Related Side Effects and Adverse Reactions / Q000517:prevention & control*; D005103:Expert Systems; D006801:Humans; D008107:Liver Diseases / Q000175:diagnosis*; D008111:Liver Function Tests / Q000379:methods*; D016347:Medical Records Systems, Computerized / Q000458:organization & administration*; D012984:Software; D012985:Software Design; D013557:Switzerland; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis