A generic system for critiquing physicians' prescriptions: usability, satisfaction and lessons learnt
This work addresses the problem of improving guideline adherence in chronic disease management for physicians, but it is incremental as it extends an existing system to a new guideline.
The study evaluated the usability and satisfaction of the ASTI critiquing module, a clinical decision support system designed to critique physicians' prescriptions against guidelines, focusing on dyslipaemia as a new application, and discussed challenges in building a generic system.
Clinical decision support systems have been developed to help physicians to take clinical guidelines into account during consultations. The ASTI critiquing module is one such systems; it provides the physician with automatic criticisms when a drug prescription does not follow the guidelines. It was initially developed for hypertension and type 2 diabetes, but is designed to be generic enough for application to all chronic diseases. We present here the results of usability and satisfaction evaluations for the ASTI critiquing module, obtained with GPs for a newly implemented guideline concerning dyslipaemia, and we discuss the lessons learnt and the difficulties encountered when building a generic DSS for critiquing physicians' prescriptions.