FDB (First Databank), a vendor of drug and medical device information designed to help healthcare professionals make precise decisions, has launched FDB CDS Analytics.

The solution is designed to enable healthcare provider organizations easily identify, monitor and customize clinical decision support (CDS) in their electronic health record, which can help enhance clinician user experiences and advance CDS impact across all care areas to improve patient outcomes, the company said.

Early adopter eyes impact of CDS

FDB is launching CDS Analytics with Indianapolis-based Community Health Network as an early adopter. Community Health Network is a nonprofit health system with more than 200 sites of care and affiliates throughout Central Indiana and integrates hundreds of physicians, eight specialty and acute care hospitals, surgery centers, home care services, urgent care clinics, and behavioral health and employer health services.

"We are constantly looking for opportunities to extend our analytics capabilities with innovations to more easily understand the impact of CDS," said Dr. Patrick McGill, chief analytics officer at Community Health Network. "With FDB CDS Analytics, we gain a more thorough view of which clinical decision support is effective and which CDS rules are not working as intended, which enables us to identify opportunities for improved clinical decision support.

"With the evidence and education, we can then put these advanced CDS rules into practice, ultimately resulting in improved clinician user experiences, increased ROI and better patient care," he added.

The cloud-based web application FDB CDS Analytics leverages the health system's data warehouse, along with FDB's drug expertise, to offer preconfigured metrics and reports to track the effectiveness of decision support.

Different roles, different views

The solution offers easy-to-understand dashboards, the company said, that are designed for different roles within the organization, as in chief medical information officers, pharmacy directors, analysts and other stakeholders. The dashboards offer the ability to view trends across the entire institution, at the departmental level and for the individual clinician.

The analytics can help organizations identify alerts that are ineffectual or may require optimization. The outcome leads to reduced alert volume and increased alert acceptance, the company contended.

"Clinical decision support tools are essential in modern EHR workflows, but it can be difficult for healthcare organizations to determine which CDS initiatives are providing clinicians with the optimal guidance they need at the right time and which are just contributing to alert fatigue," FDB President Bob Katter said.

"FDB CDS Analytics simplifies and accelerates the process of evaluating CDS across their organization with an intuitive and powerful tool that offers deeper insight into how clinicians are using CDS."

Twitter: @SiwickiHealthIT
Email the writer: bsiwicki@himss.org
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