The Clinical Decision Support Innovation Collaborative (CDSiC) is a community of diverse stakeholders at the forefront of using technology to better support care teams, patients, and caregivers. The CDSiC is working toward healthcare decisions driven by both patient-centered and patient-specific information that align with patient needs, preferences, and values.

Doctor smiling and talking to a patient Clinical decision support (CDS) refers to digital tools used to help inform patient care. Patient-centered clinical decision support (PC CDS) is CDS that centers on the patient or their caregiver and facilitates their active involvement in healthcare decision-making with their clinicians. PC CDS is the focus of the CDSiC and has the potential to be transformative by enabling higher-quality care delivery and improved outcomes. PC CDS supports individual patients or caregivers and their care teams in health-related decisions and actions using information from patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR) findings and/or patient-specific information.

The CDSiC aims to better understand what makes CDS patient-centered by serving as a proving ground of innovation, where we develop resources to support developing, testing, implementing, tracking, and measuring PC CDS in the real world. The CDSiC further aspires to shape the future of PC CDS by identifying gaps and opportunities to achieve a world in which patients, caregivers, and care teams receive evidence-based information to support shared decision-making.

The CDSiC is strategically organized into three Centers and four Workgroups, which collectively engage in activities that address all aspects of the PC CDS lifecycle, with an emphasis on patient-centeredness. Innovation and collaboration are foundational values of the CDSiC. It is supported by nationally recognized CDS and health information technology experts, as well as patient advocates and representatives, clinicians, electronic health record developers, policymakers, payors, and leaders from research and academic medical institutions.

The CDSiC is funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, through the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research (PCOR) Trust Fund. In 2016, AHRQ began a multi-component initiative to help advance PCOR into practice through CDS. This initiative included funding a learning network, funding targeted CDS research, building a platform for sharing interoperable CDS (CDS Connect), and conducting an evaluation of the overall initiative. Since Congress reauthorized the PCOR Trust Fund in late 2019, AHRQ has continued this multi-component initiative and launched the CDSiC in 2021.

CDSiC Aims and Objectives

The CDSiC aims to advance the use of PCOR in clinical practice through PC CDS. The CDSiC focuses on stakeholder collaboration, the creation of new tools and resources for CDS, and the wide dissemination of products to meet its goals. The activities of the CDSiC are guided by its vision and mission statements, which describe what the CDSiC hopes to achieve (vision) and what the CDSiC will do to achieve this (mission).

Vision

A world where patients, caregivers, and care teams have the right information at the right time to make evidence-informed decisions that improve health and well-being for all individuals.

Mission

The CDSiC aims to advance the design, development, dissemination, implementation, use, measurement, and evaluation of evidence-based, shareable, interoperable, and publicly available patient-centered clinical decision support (PC CDS) to improve health outcomes of all patients by creating a proving ground of innovation. To achieve this, CDSiC will:

Create a learning community to share and advance the knowledge, tools, standards, frameworks, and techniques for designing, developing, implementing, using, measuring, and evaluating high-quality PC CDS.
Promote the practice and adoption of PC CDS that facilitates whole-person care and considers the patient, caregiver, and clinician workflows; preferences; and values around shared decision-making.
Advance standards-based PC CDS that can be shared with patients, caregivers, clinicians, healthcare organizations, and health IT developers across the United States and result in measurable improvements in healthcare, patient health, patient care experience, and provider experience.

Related Resources

Patient-Centered Clinical Decision Support Explained
The Clinical Decision Support Innovation Collaborative (CDSiC) created this infographic to explain the definition of patient-centered clinical decision support (PC CDS).

A Lifecycle Framework Illustrates Eight Stages Necessary for Realizing the Benefits of Patient-Centered Clinical Decision Support
This manuscript discusses a comprehensive patient-centered clinical decision support (PC CDS) lifecycle framework developed and vetted by members of the CDSiC team.

CDSiC 2022 Project Summary
This CDSiC 2022 Project Summary highlights the CDSiC’s goals and desired outcomes and describes the work of the CDSiC’s three centers.

CDSiC Base Period of Performance Report
The CDSiC prepared this publicly available Period of Performance Report to summarize the activities, outputs, and outcomes of the CDSiC over the base period spanning October 2021 through September 2023.