How To: Empower and Engage Patients with Patient-Centered Clinical Decision Support

September 9, 2025

This How-To Guide provides an overview of the CDSiC’s resources that empower patients and caregivers by advancing the use of patient preferences data and facilitating shared decision making.

This resource highlights the CDSiC resources stakeholders can use to strengthen the collection and use of information about patients’ preferences in healthcare, thus encouraging patients to become more involved in decision making with their clinicians.

Incorporating patient preferences into patient-centered clinical decision support (PC CDS) is a key method of ensuring a patient’s voice is heard. By using these unique preferences to inform healthcare decision making, stakeholders give patients a clear opportunity to share their needs and priorities. This, in turn, can enhance patients’ satisfaction with care, promote patient autonomy in managing their health, and ultimately improve health outcomes. Recognizing the importance of patient preference data, the CDSiC has developed multiple products that empower patients by advancing the use of patient preferences.

About the How-To Guide 

This How-To Guide offers an overview of the CDSiC’s resources that support the effective collection and use of patient preferences in PC CDS. These resources provide insights into multiple aspects of this cutting-edge topic, which include explorations of available measurement tools and instruments used to collect patient preference data, strategies to capture patient preferences in clinical and non-clinical settings, and opportunities to advance the standardized representation of patient preferences for use in PC CDS.

How To Use This How-To Guide 

PC CDS stakeholders can use his How-To Guide to learn about strategies and opportunities to advance the use of patient preferences in healthcare decision making through their incorporation into PC CDS.

Suggested Citation: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s Clinical Decision Support Innovation Collaborative. How To: Empower and Engage Patients with Patient-Centered Clinical Decision Support. Prepared under Contract No. 75Q80120D00018. AHRQ Publication No. 25-0078. Rockville, MD: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality; September 2025.   