Effectiveness of a Decision Support System in Improving the Diagnosis and Screening Rate of Breast Cancer

Breast cancer is the most common female cancer. In the United States, the second most common cause of cancer death in women, and the main cause of death in women ages 45 to 55 years old. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends screening mammography, with or without clinical breast examination, every one to two years among women aged 50 to 69 years old.

Recent research has shown that health care delivered in industrialized nations often falls short of optimal, evidence based care. US adults receive only about half of recommended care. To address these deficiencies in care, health-care organizations are increasingly turning to clinical decision support systems. A clinical decision-support system is any computer program designed to help health-care professionals to make clinical decisions. In a sense, any computer system that deals with clinical data or knowledge is intended to provide decision support.

Examples include manual or computer based systems that attach care reminders to the charts of patients needing specific preventive care services and computerized physician order entry systems that provide patient-specific recommendations as part of the order entry process. Such systems have been shown to improve prescribing practices, reduce serious medication errors, enhance the delivery of preventive care services, and improve adherence to recommended care standards.

The aim of this study is to show the efficacy of a decision-support system as a strategy for improving the performance of the mammography care process and the detection of significantly more breast cancer.