USE OF MEDICAL INFORMATICS TO IMPLEMENT AND DEVELOP CLINICAL-PRACTICEGUIDELINES

Clinical practice guidelines have enormous potential to improve the qu ality of and accountability in health care, Making the most of this po tential should become easier as guideline developers integrate guideli nes within information systems and electronic medical records, A major barrier to such integration is the lack of computing infrastructure i n many clinical settings, To successfully implement guidelines in info rmation systems, developers must create more specific recommendations than those that have been required for traditional guidelines, Using r eusable software components to create guidelines can make the developm ent of protocols faster and less expensive, In addition, using decisio n models to produce guidelines enables developers to structure guideli ne problems systematically, to prioritize information acquisition, to develop site-specific guidelines, and to evaluate the cost-effectivene ss of the explicit incorporation of patient preferences into guideline recommendations. Ongoing research provides a foundation for the use o f guideline development tools that can help developers tailor guidelin es appropriately to their practice settings, This article explores how medical informatics can help clinicians find, use, and create practic e guidelines.