Chapter 13 - Infobuttons and point of care access to knowledge

Abstract

Clinicians' information needs are frequent and, all too often, unresolved. Online information resources are available to address many of these needs, but they are underutilized for a variety of reasons. The information needs that arise while clinicians use clinical information systems are particularly disposed to resolution with such resources. Many researchers have investigated approaches to integrating these systems with each other. One method that has been investigated and shows promise to being widely disseminated is called “infobuttons.” We describe work to develop infobutton managers that provide a flexible, generic method for integrating infobuttons with clinical systems. These infobutton managers have been successfully integrated with several different clinical information systems in an institution-independent manner. We also describe a standard developed by Health Level Seven International (HL7) to enable a standards-based approach to implementing infobuttons. Finally, we discuss ongoing research related to this kind of clinical decision support capability, including question and answering systems, as well as potential future directions.