AHRQ Funds Clinical Decision Support Innovation Collaborative

Jan. 12, 2022

Clinical Decision Support Innovation Collaborative (CDSiC) to explore CDS domains, including trust, interoperability, measurement/value, and partnership with patients

David Raths

Since 2016 the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has been supporting efforts to make clinical decision support (CDS) more shareable, standards-based, and publicly available. To extend that work, AHRQ has created the Clinical Decision Support Innovation Collaborative (CDSiC) to explore CDS domains, including trust, interoperability, measurement/value, and partnership with patients.

The CDSiC project, which has $14.5 million in funding and runs through 2026, will build on the previously funded Patient-Centered CDS Learning Network and will serve as a forum for stakeholder engagement.

The National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago will lead the research, with subcontracts to AcademyHealth, Elimu Informatics Inc., Enterprise Science and Computing; Vanderbilt University Medical Center; Regents of the University of Minnesota; and the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation. The effort will involve senior experts in the field of CDS and include patient advocates.

The specific aims of the research are:

Establish CDSiC, including its governance, with the Stakeholder Community and Outreach and Innovation Centers.
Work with stakeholders to identify PCOR-based evidence amenable to implementation through CDS.
Test and evaluate patient-centered CDS in real-world applications.
Disseminate and make findings from the stakeholder work groups and Innovation Center available.
Advance the field of patient-centered CDS.

Prashila Dullabh, M.D., vice president and senior fellow in the Health Sciences group and the director of the Health Implementation Science Center at NORC, will lead the project. She leads and serves as senior advisor on NORC’s portfolio of work on patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR). These projects emphasize development of the data infrastructure necessary for robust, patient-centered research and evidence generation; and dissemination of research knowledge through technical solutions like clinical decision support in addition to clinician and patient engagement.