Abstract

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to create a task-based support architecture for developing clinical decision support systems (CDSSs) that assist physicians in making decisions at the point-of-care in the emergency department (ED). The backbone of the proposed architecture was established by a task-based emergency workflow model for a patient-physician encounter.

Methods: The architecture was designed according to an agent-oriented paradigm. Specifically, we used the O-MaSE (Organization-based Multi-agent System Engineering) method that allows for iterative translation of functional requirements into architectural components (e.g., agents). The agent-oriented paradigm was extended with ontology-driven design to implement ontological models representing knowledge required by specific agents to operate.

Results: The task-based architecture allows for the creation of a CDSS that is aligned with the task-based emergency workflow model. It facilitates decoupling of executable components (agents) from embedded domain knowledge (ontological models), thus supporting their interoperability, sharing, and reuse. The generic architecture was implemented as a pilot system, MET3-AE – a CDSS to help with the management of pediatric asthma exacerbation in the ED. The system was evaluated in a hospital ED.

Conclusions: The architecture allows for the creation of a CDSS that integrates support for all tasks from the task-based emergency workflow model, and interacts with hospital information systems. Proposed architecture also allows for reusing and sharing system components and knowledge across disease-specific CDSSs.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This article is not an exact copy of the original published article in Methods of Information in Medicine . The definitive publisher-authenticated version of Wilk, S, Michalowski, W, O'Sullivan, D, Farion, K, Sayyad-Shirabad, J, Kuziemsky, C & Kukawka, B (2013). A Task-based Support Architecture for Developing Point-of-care Clinical Decision Support Systems for the Emergency Department. METHODS OF INFORMATION IN MEDICINE, 52(1), pp. 18-32 is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.3414/ME11-01-0099
Publisher Keywords:	decision support system, clinical; point-of-care; system architecture; agent-oriented paradigm; ontology-driven design
Subjects:	R Medicine > RC Internal medicine
Departments:	School of Science & Technology > Computer Science

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