Proposal for Fulfilling Strategic Objectives of the U.S. Roadmap for National Action on Decision Support through a Service-oriented Architecture Leveraging HL7 Services
- Division of Clinical Informatics, Department of Community and Family Medicine, Duke University, Durham, NC
- Correspondence and reprints: Kensaku Kawamoto, PhD, Division of Clinical Informatics, DUMC Box 2914, Durham, NC 27710; (e-mail: <kawam001{at}mc.duke.edu>).
- Received 3 October 2006
- Accepted 12 December 2006
Abstract
Despite their demonstrated effectiveness, clinical decision support (CDS) systems are not widely used within the U.S. The Roadmap for National Action on Clinical Decision Support, published in June 2006 by the American Medical Informatics Association, identifies six strategic objectives for achieving widespread adoption of effective CDS capabilities. In this manuscript, we propose a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) for CDS that facilitates achievement of these six objectives. Within the proposed framework, CDS capabilities are implemented through the orchestration of independent software services whose interfaces are being standardized by Health Level 7 and the Object Management Group through their joint Healthcare Services Specification Project (HSSP). Core services within this framework include the HSSP Decision Support Service, the HSSP Common Terminology Service, and the HSSP Retrieve, Locate, and Update Service. Our experiences, and those of others, indicate that the proposed SOA approach to CDS could enable the widespread adoption of effective CDS within the U.S. health care system.
Footnotes
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The views expressed in this manuscript are those of the authors alone and do not represent the views of HL7 or of AMIA.
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↵1 Dr. Kawamoto is a member of HL7, the project lead of the HSSP Decision Support Service project, and a contributor to the HSSP Retrieve, Locate, and Update Service project.
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↵2 Dr. Lobach is a member of the AMIA task force that produced the Roadmap for National Action on Clinical Decision Support.
