Patient Care & Clinical Decision Support Tools

What are Clinical Decision Support tools?

Other Useful Links
These tools provide summaries of the current state of knowledge about interventions used to prevent and treat clinical conditions. Health care professionals utilise these tools to quickly lookup information concerning diagnostic and treatment guidance at the point-of-care with a patient and contain detailed summaries of a wide range of conditions and interventions, supported by synthesized and evaluated evidence-based research and/or peer-reviewed sources. Summaries are curated by health professionals and regularly updated to reflect new evidence and can include levels of evidence, rating scales or grade recommendations as well as citations back to the original research studies, systematic reviews, or guidelines.
  • Patient information leaflets - Rotherham Foundation Trust
  • Decision Support Tools - NHS England
  • The Knowledge and Library Hub - Connects healthcare staff and learners to high quality, NHS-funded, knowledge and evidence resources in one place, using a single search. 
  • NICE Pathways
    NICE Pathways is an online tool for health and social care professionals that brings together all related NICE guidance and associated products in a set of interactive topic-based diagrams. Each pathway includes all relevant NICE guidance, including clinical guidelines, public health guidance, technology appraisals, interventional procedures, medical technology and diagnostics guidance, and quality standards, and accompanying tools produced by NICE to support implementation.
  • Map of Medicine
    The Map is a web-based visual representation of evidence-based patient care journeys covering 28 medical specialties and 390 pathways

BMJ Best Practice

Getting Started

STEP 1: Access BMJ Best Practice
  • Log in to your OpenAthens account on the NICE website. 
  • Select 'My resources' from the menu on the left.
  • Click on the link to BMJ Best Practice (If you are prompted for your institution, select 'NHS in England').
  • Scroll down to the bottom of the page. If you see a message indicating that access is provided by your institution, then you can move on to STEP 2 (create a personal user account). 
STEP 2: Create a personal account
​Your personal user account will give you anytime, anywhere access to BMJ Best Practice. Personal accounts allow you to track CME/CPD activity and to log in to the BMJ Best Practice app using your personal account credentials. This is a quick one-off registration that will link your two accounts together and going forward you can then use your personal account to log in directly to BMJ Best Practice website and app
  • Once you have signed in through your institution (see STEP 1). Click the 'Your profile' option at the top of the page and select 'Set up your free user profile'. 
STEP 3: Download the mobile app
  • Search for 'BMJ Best Practice' on the App Store or Google Play. 
  • Download the app
  • Enter your personal account login details to complete the download. 
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BMJ Best Practice is a clinical decision support tool, uniquely structured around the patient consultation, with advice on symptom evaluation, tests to order and treatment approach. Access to BMJ Best Practice is provided by Health Education England to all NHS staff in England.
Features:
  • summaries on 1000 conditions across 32 specialties, 11,000 differential diagnosis, 7000+ guidelines
  • prioritized updates as follows: drug withdrawals or changes that may affect patient safety within 24-48 hours; evidence that changes practice within one month; evidence that confirms current practice within three months.
  • monitors over 5000 journals
  • drug information via the BNF & BNFc
  • 500+ medical calculators
  • Accredited for CME/CPD activities and learning are tracked. Accredited by the RCGP and other institutions
  • Patient leaflets
  • Incorporates Cochrane Clinical Answers
  • EBM Toolkit with checklists and tools to support evaluating studies​
  • ​NEW! The Comorbidities tool is the only point of care tool that supports the management of the whole patient by including guidance on the treatment of a patient's acute condition alongside their pre-existing comorbidities.  
Further information and training guides are available on the BMJ website. ​

BMJ Best Practice mobile is available.

Dynamed

Getting Started

Access DynaMed from within the Trust without a password:​​
  • For password-free access, click on the new DynaMed shortcut on your desktop, or click on the icon to the right: if you're logged in to the Trust network this will take you straight into DynaMed.
  • You can also link to DynaMed from the intranet (Systems & Applications page and Library page) and via the NHS Knowledge and Library Hub. 
Access DynaMed from outside the Trust (with an Athens password): ​​
  • To access DynaMed from outside the Trust you'll need an NHS Athens account. You can then access DynaMed here (or via the icon above): select OpenAthens login and enter your NHS Athens user name and password. ​
  • DynaMed is also fully integrated into The Knowledge & Library Hub: your new one-stop shop for journals, ebooks, research, guidelines and decision support tools like DynaMed and BMJ Best Practice.
​DynaMed provides clinically-organised summaries for over 11,700 topics, incorporating over 1,000 drug topics. DynaMed editors monitor the content of over 500 medical journals, using a rigorous seven-step methodology for selecting and critically appraising each selected article. The tool is updated daily, making it the most current point of care tool on the market. Over 22,000 global guidelines including those from NICE, SIGN and Royal Colleges.Features:
  • Monitors 250 medical journals and 200 guideline organizations across 28 specialties
  • As soon as new evidence is evaluated using the six steps governing systematic processing, it is integrated into the appropriate topic(s)
  • Recommendations are developed using the internationally-accepted Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) system
  • Utilizes a three level evidence reliability rating
  • Clinicians’ Practice Points provides guidance and opinion from their expert physician editors
  • To access content remotely and via the app create a personal account.
*Personal account required

DynaMed mobile is available.

Access through the App
  • Download the mobile app for quick, on-the-go access. 
  • The app is available on Google Play (Android) and the App Store (iOS) 
  • The app is compatible with any iPhone, iPad or iPod touch running iOS 10.0 or higher or any Android device running Android 5.0 or higher.  
  • Search Google Play or the App Store for 'Dynamed' and download the app. 
  • It is recommended that you are on a Wi-Fi connection for the initial download of DynaMed content as well as when updates become available. The app can then be used offline. 
  • Open the app on your device, tap 'Sign in' and enter your personal user account credentials (see STEP 2 if you don't know your credentials)
  • More detailed instructions are available online.