Patient Care & Clinical Decision Support Tools

What are Clinical Decision Support tools?

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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
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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. ​

Dynamed
​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