Overview

Dr. Walter Stewart at the Center for Health Research, Geisinger Health System, will collaborate with Dr. Richard Shiffman at Yale as part of the year #3 objectives of the project entitled “Guidelines into decision support (GLIDES).” The activities during the funding period ending 4/30/2011 are outlined in the following sections. The primary activities will include design and planning. Implementation will not occur during the proposed phases of work, but will hopefully occur as part of a subsequent implementation phase.

Clinical Objectives

The objective of this collaborative project is to translate low back pain clinical guidelines using the Guideline Element Model (GEM) Software into highly specific rules that will be used to operate on specific data reported by the patient or that is available from the electronic health record (EHR). The rules will deliver a choice (e.g., deployment of a best practice alert) that supports an action (e.g., computerized Clinical Decision Support (CDS) tool visible in a web-display or tailored after-visit-summary (AVS) letter) and/or to trigger an action (e.g., mailing of the AVS or creation of an order).