“CATCH-IT Reports” are Critically Appraised Topics in Communication, Health Informatics, and Technology, discussing recently published ehealth research. We hope these reports will draw attention to important work published in journals, provide a platform for discussion around results and methodological issues in eHealth research, and help to develop a framework for evidence-based eHealth. CATCH-IT Reports arise from “journal club” - like sessions founded in February 2003 by Gunther Eysenbach.

Saturday, November 7, 2009

CATCH-IT Draft: Clinical Decision Support capabilities of Commercially-available Clinical Information Systems

WRIGHT, A., SITTIG, D. F., ASH, J.S., SHARMA, S., PANG, J. E., and MIDDLETON, B. (2009). Clinical Decision Support capabilities of Commercially-available Clinical Information Systems. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 16(5), 637 – 644.

Background
Recent studies have reported that the CDS applications built in-house produce the best results. However, there is not much research done for the CDS capabilities of commercially available clinical information systems (CIS). The cited paper wishes to fill this gap in research by evaluating the CDS capabilities of 9 commercially available CCHIT certified EHR systems using a 42-element functional taxonomy. The evaluations are based on information collected from the vendors and customers of the EHR systems. The study finds that while capabilities for ‘triggers’ in CDS are well covered among the systems, many capabilities for ‘offered choices’ are not present. The results of the study are presented pseudonymously to respect privacy of the customer.

This report is based on an evaluation of the study in the CATCH-IT Journal Club. It reports the key points raised about the methodological issues of the study as a result of the CATCH-IT analysis. These issues are discussed in the following, and it is expected that consideration of this evaluation will enhance the quality of the research performed by the research community.

Methodological Issues
There are several methodological issues with the original study that can be highlighted. These methodological issues can be causes of potential concerns that may hinder the validity of the research findings. The following sections discuss the methodological issues in more detail.

Use of CCHIT Certified EHR Systems
The authors indicated about the use of CCHIT certification as a baseline for the selected systems in the study. As a result of establishing such a baseline, the authors have ensured that the selected systems meet a particular quality and are have comparable features.

An investigation of the CCHIT certification requirements has indicated that the CCHIT certification criteria are continuously evolving, with additional requirements being added each year. CCHIT uses a matrix of requirements with specific requirements relating to a system’s domain of use (such as ambulatory care and outpatient care) and the system’s aspect of use (such as for EMR storage and CDS). While CCHIT certification has been used as a baseline for the selection procedure of the systems, the authors have not discussed details about what year the selected systems were certified, and whether their certification has been renewed with the evolving CCHIT requirements. In addition, it is unclear as to what the authors have done to ensure that the features in the selected taxonomy are in alignment with the CDS –specific requirements CCHIT.

System Selection Procedure
The authors indicated in the methods that a preliminary set of CCHIT certified EHR systems was identified based on figures from Klas and HIMSS Analytics. The vendors involved with the development of these systems and the customers of these systems were then contacted, based on which a sample of 9 systems were selected for this study.

The immediate concerns that arise regarding the selection procedure is that it is unclear as to how many systems were originally selected, what was the nature of such communications (such as questions asked, and type of information requested), and what was the criteria for short listing the selected EHRs for the study. Without such details, the study cannot illustrate to the audience that the study followed an effective selection procedure in which there was no external influence, and that a specific system was included or excluded from the study due to potential bias.

Taxonomy Selection
For the purpose of determining the availability of a certain CDS capability in the selected systems, the authors selected a self-developed functional taxonomy that combined common CDS capabilities along four axes – triggers, input data elements, interventions, and offered choices. The authors mention that the taxonomy was developed based on a research at the Partners HealthCare System, by emphasizing on the fact that there was no other functional taxonomy available for use in this research.

It has been determined that the taxonomy has been developed based on the numerous clinical rules used at the Partners HealthCare System in Boston. While Partners is evidently a large healthcare system involving a blend of healthcare provider types, it must be noted that the developed taxonomy has not been validated by employing it in other healthcare organizations outside of Partners.

Due to the concerns raised by the use of an un-validated self-developed taxonomy in this research, an investigative approach has been used to determine how well the taxonomy has been received by the research community. Findings suggest that even though the taxonomy research was published in 2007, to date there are only 5 journal articles that reference that research study. There is only one article that has not been authored by any of the researchers involved with the taxonomy development. However, that article does not make any specific reference to the taxonomy or its development. As a result, research has failed to identify any neutral opinion about the developed taxonomy, raising concerns of self-boasting by the authors’ use of a self-developed taxonomy that lacks an apparent acceptance in the research community. However, this raises serious concerns about the findings of the study, since the study evaluation is wholly based on the CDS capabilities indentified in the taxonomy.

Data Collection Procedure
In this study, the vendors and customers of the 9 systems were contacted and interviewed by three of the authors. The outcomes of these interviews were used to evaluate the CDS capabilities of each system against the 42-element taxonomy. The authors reported that if there was any doubt about the availability of a particular feature in any of the systems, they contacted other customers, read product manuals, and conducted hands-on evaluation to determine availability of a feature.

The paper suggests that three of the authors were involves with the data collection procedure. The authors have not specified what kind of data collection mechanisms were used for collecting the data. Data collection procedures can be a cause of bad data for which the study is based. As a result, the researchers must demonstrate the validity of their data collection procedure. For example, it is not known whether the authors used one-on-one interviews or panel interviews for collecting the data, how many interviews were conducted with the same interviewee, were the interviews open-ended or close-ended, how many questions were involved, what was the follow-up procedure, and what did the authors do to prepare for the interviews. The audience of the research can easily raise questions about the procedures and argue about the limitations of the procedures used. A well-written report will typically avoid letting such concerns settle in the mind of its audience.

Apart from the concerns about the data collection procedure, there are concerns about the validity of the collected data. It is unclear who the researchers spoke with in each of these interviews with the vendors or customers. Not all members of the vendor organization are able to answer the same question about the availability of a particular feature. In the case of a vendor, there may be bias in the answers about the availability of a certain feature. At the same time, asking the customers about the availability of a feature may raise concerns about the knowledge of customer about the product itself. And this leads to the question as to what method did the authors use to ensure that 1) what the vendors and customers are saying are actually valid, 2) how was the collected data validated, 3) what is it that raised doubts in the researchers’ minds because of which they conducted further investigation, and 4) what determined whether a feature is actually available.

Results Interpretation
The results of the study have been presented in a tabular form for each of the axis of the taxonomy by evaluating the systems against the features in the axes. To respect the software vendors’ right to privacy, the results were pseudonymously represented by identifying each system with a number. In their evaluation, the authors used a binary-style evaluation, where the result is either yes (available) or no (unavailable). Since both in-patient and outpatient were used, the inapplicable criterion for a system was marked as N/A (not applicable). The final result was represented with a count of unavailable features by each system by each axis. In the authors’ view, the system with the least number of unavailable features is the best system.
Although the authors have mentioned this as a limitation of their study, but the binary-style evaluation does not match the way that the data for this study has been collected and used. The data collected in the study was qualitative, and it has been used to evaluate a question to yes or no. Similar to the concern about the validity of collected data, this raises serious questions about the validity of the evaluation that the authors have performed. For example, even if a feature is available, what did the authors do to evaluate how well that feature has been implemented by the software developers? How complete is the feature? How usable is it? How applicable is it for a particular setting?

The representation of the final result in this research by tallying the number of unavailable features is all but useful. The authors have failed to use key concepts of importance, usefulness, and frequency of use of an available feature. For example, a feature may be useful, but may not be frequently used. Or perhaps a feature is not frequently used but is very important for the success of a CDS application. This directly impacts the final results of the study where the authors chose the system with the least number of unavailable features as the best system. Since the scoring system used in this research is weak, it can be argued that the results are invalid.

Questions for the authors
1. What led to the linear treatment of the capabilities?
2. What was the reason behind the use of a taxonomy which is not yet well-received in the research community?
3. What were the steps taken to validate the information gathered from the vendors and customers?
4. What was the reasoning behind counting the number of unavailable features rather than available ones? Did you not want to deal with the complexity of working with N/A?
5. Why were both inpatient and outpatient systems with potentially different capabilities selected for the study?

References
1. Wright A, Sittig D F, Ash J S, Sharma S, Pang J E, and Middleton B. Clinical Decision Support capabilities of Commercially-available Clinical Information Systems. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association 2009; 16(5): 637-644.

2. Parners Healthcare. What is Partners?. Accessed via http://www.partners.org/about/about_whatis.html. Accessed on October 20, 2009

3. Scopus. Scopus Journal Search. Accessed via http://simplelink.library.utoronto.ca/url.cfm/54186. Accessed on October 22, 2009

4. BioMed Experts. Accessed via http://www.biomedexperts.com. Accessed on October 15, 2009.

5. DMICE: People – Students. Department of Medical Informatics & Clinical Epidemiology, Oregon Health & Science University. Accessed via http://www.ohsu.edu/ohsuedu/academic/som/dmice/people/students/index.cfm. Accessed on October 20, 2009

6. Clinical and Quality Analysis, Information Systems. Clinical and Quality Analysis Staff. Accessed via http://www.partners.org/cqa/Staff.htm. Accessed on October 18, 2009.

7. Wrigh A, Goldberg H, Hongsermeier T, and Middleton B. A Description and Functional Taxonomy of Rule-Based Decision Support Content at a Large Integrated Delivery Network. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association 2007; 14(4): 489-496.

8. CCHIT. Concise Guide to CCHIT Certification Criteria. Accessed via http://www.cchit.org/sites/all/files/ConciseGuideToCCHIT_CertificationCriteria_May_29_2009.pdf. Accessed on October 10, 2009.

9. Sittig DF, Wright A, Osheroff JA, Middleton B, Teich JM, Ash JS, Campbell E, Bates DW. Grand challenges in clinical decision support. Journal of Biomedical Informatics 2008; 41(2):387-392.

6 comments:

  1. One other point about the taxonomy selection you might want to further highlight is to mention if there are other taxonomies that are available and perhaps see if they have been better referenced/used.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Might consider stating that the sample size is not declared, the reader does not know basic information such as how many people were interviewed.

    ReplyDelete
  3. In addition to comments by Arun, you had cited other taxonomies from other sources. You may want to comment on these and state if comparative or whether any could be applied to render the self-boasting invalid or not.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Were the overall results of the study useful? Or... was the lack of naming the vendors too much of a limitation? I don't know how important that is, but I found vendor's right to privacy to be a huge limitation to the study - that is where the value is.

    You touched on it slightly as well, but I think part of the issue of this paper is just that they left out key information (that they probably had). Perhaps if the paper was more thoroughly written, these issues would not be issues.

    ReplyDelete
  5. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  6. As Arun mentioned, it is good to find out if there are other taxonomies outside of this sutdy.

    Also, you have a lot of references at the end of your draft report but you did not cite them within your report.

    ReplyDelete