PBL1 - Identify Form and Function of a System

Case Background

Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSS) are widely used in modern healthcare to improve patient safety and decision-making. Examples include:

  • Drug–drug interaction alerts embedded in EHRs.
  • Predictive risk calculators for sepsis or readmissions.
  • Order sets and care pathways for standardizing treatment.

Problem Statement

Your team has been asked to select one existing CDSS in healthcare, research its design and purpose, and then decompose it into forms and functions. The goal is to uncover:

  • Functions → the purposeful transformations (e.g., detect risk, notify clinician, recommend action).
  • Forms → the physical/logical components that provide those functions (e.g., rules engine, knowledge base, EHR interface, APIs).

Learning Activities

  1. Select a CDSS.
    • Choose a real-world CDSS (e.g., Epic’s sepsis early warning system, Cerner’s drug–drug interaction checker, or a published AI-based decision support tool).
    • Gather public information from vendor sites, case studies, and peer-reviewed literature.
  2. Identify Functions
    • What does the CDSS do? (e.g., analyze lab values, compare against thresholds, generate alerts, support clinical decisions, log responses)
  3. Identify Forms
    • How is the CDSS built and arranged? (e.g., knowledge base, inference engine, FHIR APIs, alert UI, terminology services.)
  4. Architecture Diagram
    • Produce a simple architecture diagram showing data flows, functions, and forms. You may follow the OPM approach to generate the diagram, but it is not required.
  5. Reflect
    • Why is distinguishing form and function useful for evaluating CDSS effectiveness and reducing unintended consequences like alert fatigue?

Expected Deliverables

  • Short report (1-3 pages) summarizing the chose CDSS, its functions and forms

  • Architecture Diagram. There are many free or open-source tools for diagramming, such as Lucidchart (https://www.lucidchart.com/pages), Diagrams.net (previously draw.io, https://app.diagrams.net/), etc. You may use whichever tool you are most comfortable with or that best fits your needs. For classroom demonstrations, I will be using Lucidchart.