On Data Quality and Risk in Guideline Based Clinical Decision Support

48 Pages Posted: 8 Nov 2009

See all articles by Sharique Hasan

Sharique Hasan

Stanford Graduate School of Business

Rema Padman

School of Information Systems and Management, The H. John Heinz III College

George T. Duncan

Carnegie Mellon University

Date Written: November 7, 2009

Abstract

Guideline based clinical decision support systems provide patient-specific medical guidance to physicians, often at the point-of-care. A large body of research shows that these systems have the potential to reduce practice variation and human error. However, there is also evidence suggesting that these systems may introduce unintended risk into the medical-decision making process. The poor quality of data in medical records and databases poses one such risk. As a result, appropriately assessing the magnitude of the risk posed by data quality is an important, but difficult problem. The nature of this risk depends on several complex and interrelated factors. To analyze the extent of this problem, we provide a novel framework that explicitly models the nature of data, errors, and how guideline based clinical decisions support systems process information and produce guidance. Our framework gives the decision-maker the ability to assess how uncertainty about data quality translates into the risk of negative medical consequences and determine which data elements are most critical for minimizing this risk. The results of our framework can inform both efficient data-quality improvement and risk minimization strategies.

Keywords: Data quality, risk, decision support systems, healthcare

JEL Classification: Z00

Suggested Citation

Hasan, Sharique and Padman, Rema and Duncan, George T., On Data Quality and Risk in Guideline Based Clinical Decision Support (November 7, 2009). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1501762 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1501762

Sharique Hasan (Contact Author)

Stanford Graduate School of Business ( email )

655 Knight Way
Stanford, CA 94305-5015
United States

Rema Padman

School of Information Systems and Management, The H. John Heinz III College ( email )

Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890
United States

George T. Duncan

Carnegie Mellon University ( email )

Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890
United States

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
77
Abstract Views
829
Rank
563,673
PlumX Metrics