NYSDA Publications

AHRQ Issues CDSiC Newsletter

Oct 30, 2024

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has issued its Clinical Decision Support Innovation Collaborative (CDSiC) newsletter.

Issue Number 23 | October 30, 2024
In this edition of the Insider, we highlight a blog post co-authored by members of the AHRQ CDSiC leadership team, a report on incorporating social determinants of health (SDOH) into patient-centered clinical decision support (PC CDS), and visual resources on co-design and the use of patient preferences data in PC CDS.
Table of Contents:
The National Patient Advocate Foundation blog recently published a post co-authored by patient advocate members of the AHRQ CDSiC Steering Committee, AcademyHealth, and NORC leadership. The blog explains the concept of PC CDS, describes how it relates to patients, and highlights three key areas to advancing PC CDS: trust, co-design, and ensuring tools fit into patients' lives to offer more value. Read the blog here!
PC CDS tools that leverage SDOH data can provide more holistic care recommendations, which can then positively impact clinical and quality of care outcomes. However, while there is agreement that SDOH are important to PC CDS, there is a need to identify opportunities that will advance the use of this critical information.

In response, the AHRQ CDSiC's Trust and Patient-Centeredness Workgroup developed a comprehensive action plan that identifies needs, key challenges, current efforts, and future opportunities to support the collection and use of SDOH data for PC CDS. This action plan can be used to better understand the barriers associated with their use in PC CDS, as well as methods for overcoming these barriers to make care delivery more equitable, impactful, and tailored to the diverse needs of patients. Read the action plan here!
Co-design is a key method of ensuring that PC CDS tools align with clinician workflows or patient lifeflows. To advance the use of co-design methods throughout the development of PC CDS, the AHRQ CDSiC released a new chartbook on this important topic.

The chartbook summarizes key takeaways from a detailed report, highlighting six methods that can be used to involve diverse stakeholders in PC CDS co-design: consultative groups, surveys, focus groups, empathy interviews, prototypes, and usability tests. Read the chartbook here!
The AHRQ CDSiC created a new infographic that highlights findings from a key project report, the Taxonomy of Patient Preferences. It depicts the six domains of patient preference information most relevant to PC CDS, as well as major considerations for collecting and incorporating patient preferences.

Developers, evaluators, patient advocates, and healthcare organizations can use this resource as an organizing framework for advancing patient-centered care through the use of patient preferences. Check out the infographic here!
The work of the AHRQ CDSiC will be showcased in a panel, podium presentation, and two posters at the upcoming AMIA Annual Symposium taking place in San Francisco, CA from November 9-13. The theme this year is Informatics in the Age of Generative Artificial Intelligence. See below for an overview of these exciting presentations – we hope to see you there!
Quartz App to Support Medication Adherence: Usability and Feasibility Assessment

Few studies have explored the deployment and use of PC CDS interventions in real-world practice settings. The AHRQ CDSiC Innovation Center designed and developed a PC CDS prototype, known as Quartz, that leverages healthcare standards, text messaging, and chatbot technology to support patients with taking their hypertension medications. This report assesses the design, development, deployment, and future use of this PC CDS application.
PAIGE Chatbot for Patient-Clinician Communication: Usability and Utility Assessment

Large language model (LLM) tools can potentially reduce back-and-forth messaging to respond to patient questions more efficiently. The AHRQ CDSiC Innovation Center designed and developed a PC CDS prototype known as PAIGE that leverages an LLM to improve and streamline patient-clinician communication on the patient portal. This report assesses the future use of this prototype.
 
The Clinical Decision Support Innovation Collaborative (CDSiC) is a community of broad, diverse stakeholders at the forefront of using technology to better support care teams, patients, and caregivers. The CDSiC is working toward healthcare decisions that are driven by both patient-centered and patient-specific information and that align with patient needs, preferences, and values. The CDSiC is funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) as part of a multi-component initiative to help advance patient-centered outcomes research into practice through CDS. For any inquiries regarding the CDSiC you may contact the project team at CDSiC@norc.org.