Medical informatics vendor introduces clinical support tools into EHR solution

Electronic health record (EHR) vendor Allscripts has announced that it will integrate clinical decision support (CDS) tools developed by DiagnosisOne into its range of medical informatics systems.

CDS tools provide healthcare professionals with enhanced, real time notifications relating to patient care. Such functionality is becoming increasingly important as hospitals and primary care providers seek to improve the quality of patient care and reduce costs and potential exposure to liabilities.

Information Week reports that officials from Allscripts say many medical informatics vendors are looking to third-party developers to provide them with customizable tools to provide physicians with individualized tools based on the needs of their patients. Presently, only Epic and General Electric are developing in-house clinical decision support tools as part of their Qualibria electronic health record solution.

"Our clients count on us to continuously evolve our solutions and deliver capabilities like clinical decision support, which plays an increasingly important role in effective patient treatment and ongoing quality improvement," Lee Shapiro, president of the medical informatics vendor, said in a statement. "We are excited to collaborate with DiagnosisOne in providing strong CDS, clinical analytics technology and a vast library of evidence-based content to help our clients measure, inform and improve the care they provide their patients."

DiagnosisOne's CDS tools rely on real time data transferal protocols that enable physicians to access the latest updates to patient health information from a centralized database maintained by the developer. As changes are made to a patient's charts in a medical informatics network, this information is relayed to the database and distributed to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to allow for real time updates in clinical informatics networks.

Information Week reports that the new tools will enable physicians to accurately determine the most appropriate care options for patients who are at risk of potential complications, or whose admission history is irregular thanks to the centralized nature of the reporting software.