Implementing clinical practice guidelines for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in an EHR system

Abstract

The use of clinical practice guidelines to improve quality of care has been a vividly discussed topic. Clinical practice guidelines (CPG) aim to improve the health of patients by guiding individual care in clinical settings. CPGs bring potential benefits for patients by improving clinical decision making, improving efficiency and enhancing patient care, while essentially optimizing financial value. Chronic conditions like heart disease, stroke, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), plague the US healthcare system causing several million dollars in healthcare related cost. This paper demonstrates the development of a CPG into an open-source EHR system to effectively manage COPD patients. The CPG is incorporated using the open web app standard, which allows it to be used with any web browser based EHR system, once data from the EHR system can be fed into the app. As a result, the CPG helps create a more effective and efficient decision-making process.