2009 Implementers Group Meeting Program Decision Support
Venue: Tree Tops
Extremely Rough Notes
These notes may or may not get edited.
large space
based on logic service (ARDEN Syntax) which became usable in that last here.
used by Paul's CHICA (?) System
Martin (AMPATH) is working on taking critical summarires and driving them through the logic service and provide clinicians with information
Paul: Clinical reminders are transformations of data
eg: Hemogloben of 8, MCV of 5(?) for a child means iron deficient
Reminders can be string of text, other values or a combination of both
Burke: Goals are to allow the system to treat
Birdge the gap between computers and clinicians/researchers
Answers to real questions are almost always derived concepts
Is asmathic? answers: asmatic diagnosis? been to astma clinic? are they on treatment? peak flow below threashold?
Idea: define a derived concept which encapsulates the rules
Make derived concepts as available as standard concpets
Make it possible for non-programmers to define rules
Diagnosis suggestions
Burke:
Decision support can be thought of broader as just logic service
Aim to help the users along the way
HTML form entry validation is a form of decision support
Conflicting prescriptions (counter indicaitons) alerts
Prescription suggestions is a form of decision support (makes things easier)
e.g. In Burke's hospital the changed a default dosage of Antibiotics from twice to once a day when the literature changed, and had the desired effect
Decision support also means prividing the correct options to guide care practices
Need to think about how we maximize our effect
Martin (clinician) about changing behaviour in Eldoret:
Use systems to collect data
Has not happened: clinicians getting the data back
-> They want to see the information as a flow sheet or clinical summary
Challenge: Show data to clinical !! (The report vertically fine)
Next step to use data to improve care
Look at standards and protocols and use system data to provide alerts
e.g. Haven't got CD4 could, prescription contra indications, various logic rules
REASON: Mostly clinical officers and NOT clinitians, so decision support WILL improve care
AMPATH: Coded deision rules in java
Found -> rules aren't followed
e.g. no CD4 count for many patients (or old CD4 counts)
Privided clinical summaries based on hard coded rules
Included alerts
when from 35% complience went up to 60-70%
bring providers to the same leve
Easier to hard code for a few rules
for 200 rules not so easy?
and there are many rules that could be applied to improve care
Thinks can prove to the world to increase patient outcomes, and reduce the cost of care and increase quality of care even for non-clinitians
Need to decouple from concept_id's to make more robust and reusable
Paul:
Martins work is part of clinical trial
Now have full-time developer (Win?) working on logic service
Challenges: when clinicians approach developer to write a rule they think about coarse idea's
seems on the surface to be simple, but defining things depend on how ppl practive medicing
e.g. finding ppl who are HIV+ may be difficult
could have a diagnosis, could be based on treatment, might be assumed for everyone (e.g. in an HIV clinic)
necessary to consider the complexities
need a way to document within the system
Paul has a grant and other funding to improve logic service, with is being used in production
Making it easy to write the rules is difficult
Don't want clinicians to have to learn Java
ARDEN is a language specifically used to represent medical logic rules
Collegue made a parser that converts ARDEN to Java
Roger Friedman:
[CDC] Used to having well-defined cases and dont want fuzzy case logic
Paul:
Need to match logic to vagueries of how people document medical care
AMPATH: Clinitians taking care of 60 patients in a half-day
Difficult to document acurately always : high burden
Have to make a assumptions have vagueries
Trying to extract clinical knowledge is where rubber hits the road
Similar problem for indicators -> rule is written as OR's (e.g. for ppl on antiretrovals)
Would like to use rules to compensate for human recording bias
Burke:
"Life is hard" - Burke's mentor Clem
Simple rule: every woman over 45 should have a mamogram has complexities
e.g. had mamogram in external system, had bilateral masectomy, only has 3 months to live
Have to accept things don't happen according to plan
So we are trying to define the rules and apply as best as possible and realising that sometimes there are going to be exceptions
with the goal of providing clinicians with useful information
Loop will be self-correcting because if rules are broken, hopefully the pattern on care wil be correct in the next iteration
Chris:
Interested in how treatment failure will be affected by this
Based on clinicians decisions to change regimens
Requesting whether decision support speaks to this (genotyping)?
Martin:
Thinks logic service should help by alowing you to write rules to define
criteria for treatment failure
Logic should be generic framework
Can use every piece of data stored in the system (adherence, drugs, labs, etc)
You can use this data to write the ruels
Paul:
Key for genotypic inforation: get into the database like other data
Then write rules taking this into account
Chris:
Can you do data mining?
Paul:
Maching Learning?
Chris:
Ben building SVM to look at outcomes and genotypic information
Paul:
Dont have machin learning, but can use ouput of something like that
Isaac:
Asked about statistical approach, maching learning?
Evan:
Was asked about Boabab and Mateme for (NDH and PIH)
Knew workflow of creating a new treatment takes long
So they asked clinicans to link treatments to diagnosis
Show list or treatments ordered by frequency
Martin:
Frequency is good in some cases -- unless a lot of them are doing it wrong
Evan:
Want to be able to remove things from list
Want to be able to move to something that is editorialised
?:
OMRS focused on person level
Epidimiology looks are person, place, time, agent
Family doctor able to make decision while also consider context (e.g. context)
Asked how context information can be used to assist decision support
to make brige between family doctor style and mass care
Burke:
First step is to get the necessary data
interview with social worker or nurse to get context
PRojects in place to get aggregate data to systems that are good at epidemiological analysis
?:
So can logic serive do this stuff with the data?
Paul:
Local context has large influence on how health-care is practiced
Local variance is key to how things are done
Rules are difficult to generalize outright
Local tweaks will NEED to be done for treatment success
Thats why local capacity is important
Hamish:
1. Machine LEarning
Working on collecting data on TB drug resistance
Will be doing machine learning
Will include geographical and sociological factors
Illustrates overlap of clinical treatment and other factors
Challenging to collect data thats why nurese or social workers are used
2. When buiding DS systems
Subtle art to scale up from a few rules to many rules
ppl get annoyed with lots of rules and then ignore them
?:
If we have default concepts can we get nice trusted rules by default
Paul:
Thought about this
if ppl share conpepts, derived concepts will work
higher level rules will be human understood (hiv positive)
will still have to add local context
will have to define where customization needs to be done
even if tweaking is needed, still worth sharing
sharing is good because it improve the generality of the ruels
MAtrin:
Problem of sharing rules and reminders is pretty international
There are funded projects which try to come up with ways to share ruels and reminders
we would like to use those standed
carol(?):
we need a holistic view
contextual factors are critical to have usefule DS system
OMRS value: access to the knowledge
need transfer across languages
transfer data through language and DS we will see clinical care improvement
DS can be confusing
will be nice to get help from DS from developed world
Darius:
CAn we hide the complexity?
can WHO (or others) help define a few crucial rules
Burke:
We are trying to do that, and also with concept (OCC) and other standardisation attempts
using collaboration and crowd sourcing
sharing is needed
when creating forms or concepts, first see what exists and try and use it
rules should folllow
Andy:
this discusiion is about symantic interoperability
OCC allows us to define internal standard
Using reference maps (SNOMED) need to be used for external interoperability
?:
Philedelphia uses DS to provide clinical feedback
can be aggregated up
chris bailey:
last year talked about convening a meeting about clinical ontologies
should consider it this year
to make sure what we're doing is aligned with other efforts