Clinical decision support system
Digital Health and AI
Definition. A clinical decision support system (CDSS) is software that gives clinicians patient-specific information, alerts or recommendations at the point of care to improve decisions.
Explanation
Traditional CDSS are rule-based, for example drug interaction checks, while newer tools use machine learning or retrieval-augmented language models trained on specialist guidance (Ozmen et al., 2025). Comparisons with general chatbots show that dedicated, validated systems remain more reliable for tasks such as interaction screening (Bischof et al., 2025).
The main implementation problem is alert fatigue: when workload is high and alerts repeat, clinicians override more of them, including important ones (Ancker et al., 2017). Effective CDSS design limits low-value alerts, fits the workflow and is monitored for overrides and errors after go-live.
Related concepts
Artificial intelligence (AI) Alarm fatigue Medication error Electronic health record (EHR) Large language models (LLMs)
Read on The Health Topics
- AI Clinical Decision Support for Hand Surgery
- ChatGPT versus Clinical Decision Support for Drug Interactions
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References
Ancker, J. S., Edwards, A., Nosal, S., Hauser, D., Mauer, E., & Kaushal, R. (2017). Effects of workload, work complexity, and repeated alerts on alert fatigue in a clinical decision support system. BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making, 17 (1), Article 36. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12911-017-0430-8
Bischof, T., al Jalali, V., Zeitlinger, M., Jorda, A., Hana, M., Singeorzan, K.-N., Riesenhuber, N., Stemer, G., & Schoergenhofer, C. (2025). Chat GPT vs. Clinical Decision Support Systems in the Analysis of Drug–Drug Interactions. Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics. doi:10.1002/cpt.3585
Ozmen, B. B., Singh, N., Shah, K., Berber, I., Singh, D., Pinsky, E., Rampazzo, A., & Schwarz, G. S. (2025). Development of a novel artificial intelligence clinical decision support tool for hand surgery: HandRAG. Journal of Hand and Microsurgery, 17, 100293. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jham.2025.100293
Cite this entry: Kurutkan, M. N. (2026). Clinical decision support system. In The Health Topics glossary. https://healthtopic.org/glossary/clinical-decision-support-system/
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