title: A task-based support architecture for developing point-of-care clinical decision support systems for the emergency department.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The purpose of this study was to create a task-based support architecture for developing clinical decision support systems (CDSSs) that assist physicians in making decisions at the point-of-care in the emergency department (ED). The backbone of the proposed architecture was established by a task-based emergency workflow model for a patient-physician encounter.
  
  
  METHODS
  The architecture was designed according to an agent-oriented paradigm. Specifically, we used the O-MaSE (Organization-based Multi-agent System Engineering) method that allows for iterative translation of functional requirements into architectural components (e.g., agents). The agent-oriented paradigm was extended with ontology-driven design to implement ontological models representing knowledge required by specific agents to operate.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The task-based architecture allows for the creation of a CDSS that is aligned with the task-based emergency workflow model. It facilitates decoupling of executable components (agents) from embedded domain knowledge (ontological models), thus supporting their interoperability, sharing, and reuse. The generic architecture was implemented as a pilot system, MET3-AE--a CDSS to help with the management of pediatric asthma exacerbation in the ED. The system was evaluated in a hospital ED.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The architecture allows for the creation of a CDSS that integrates support for all tasks from the task-based emergency workflow model, and interacts with hospital information systems. Proposed architecture also allows for reusing and sharing system components and knowledge across disease-specific CDSSs.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Computing Science, Poznan University of Technology, Poznan, Poland. szymon.wilk@cs.put.poznan.pl
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wilk
authors.forename: W
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Michalowski
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: O'Sullivan
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Farion
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Sayyad-Shirabad
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Kuziemsky
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Kukawka
mesh_terms: D001249:Asthma / Q000628:therapy; D003198:Computer Simulation; D003199:Computer Systems; D020000:Decision Support Systems, Clinical; D004636:Emergency Service, Hospital; D006801:Humans; D051188:Knowledge Bases; D010865:Pilot Projects; D019095:Point-of-Care Systems; D012308:Risk Management; D057188:Workflow