This article outlined the background and the concept of health decision support system (HDSS), discussed its application status in medical service, hospital management, public health management and other fields in the following four developed countries: United States, UK, Canada and Australia. It also introduced the main functions of MYCIN, CPOE, DHCP, Panorama etc., and summarized the above four countries’ successful experiences, including, actively promoting the application of decision support technology in health field through closely combining with the practical needs, valuing evidenced-based resources development and repository research, making scientific health policy to guide the orderly development of decision support systems, and strengthening the construction of E-health infrastructure and core systems, in hopes of providing reference for the development of health decision support system in China.
In combination with the national health informatization construction in UK during the past ten years, this article introduced the resource construction of decision making knowledge library like British Electronic Medicine Library Clinical Pathway Database and NHS Evidence, as well as the function and application of clinical decision support system (CDSS) like PRODIGY, medical knowledge map and so on, discussed the development characteristics and construction experiences of British health decision support system (HDSS). And aiming directly at Chinese specific circumstances, this article offered some suggestions on promoting China HDSS development, for instance, dynamically integrating CDSS with patients’ diagnosis and treatment procedure through the electronic medical record system, strengthening the resources construction of knowledge library, establishing localized clinical pathway, and so on.
In order to understand the latest progress of health decision support system (HDSS) construction, grasp the law of HDSS development and adopt the international advanced experience, this paper took Australia for example, presented a comparative analysis on the construction practices, including the contents, features and system functions of national construction guidelines for HDSS in different periods, and showed the integral development level of Australia HDSS was still in the exploratory stage, and its construction goal, function orientation and construction mechanism got improved gradually with the deep development of public health information. Additionally, to assure the accuracy and safety of HDSS function, Australia has been laying stress on the standard specification construction and system function authentication.
The health decision support system in Canada is embodied in Electronic Health Record Solutions, which includes Public Health Surveillance System, Drug Information Systems, Laboratory Information Systems, etc. By virtue of business intelligence and other advanced information techology, the system can realize the function of statistical analysis, data mining, prediction, and transform information into predicting and guiding knowledge, thus support health decision-making in terms of health surveillance, resources allocation and quality control. The success lie in b support from the federal government, efficient responsible organization Infoway as well as comprehensive and strategic design, which can be served as good enlightenment for HDSS construction of China.