Decision support system

A decision support system (DSS) is a computer-based information system that supports business or organizational decision-making activities. DSSs serve the management, operations, and planning levels of an organization (usually mid and higher management) and help people make decisions about problems that may be rapidly changing and not easily specified in advance—i.e. Unstructured and Semi-Structured decision problems. Decision support systems can be either fully computerized, human-powered or a combination of both.

While academics have perceived DSS as a tool to support decision making process, DSS users see DSS as a tool to facilitate organizational processes. Some authors have extended the definition of DSS to include any system that might support decision making. Sprague (1980) defines DSS by its characteristics:

Clinical decision support system

A clinical decision support system (CDSS) is a health information technology system that is designed to provide physicians and other health professionals with clinical decision support (CDS), that is, assistance with clinical decision-making tasks. A working definition has been proposed by Robert Hayward of the Centre for Health Evidence: "Clinical Decision Support systems link health observations with health knowledge to influence health choices by clinicians for improved health care". CDSSs constitute a major topic in artificial intelligence in medicine.

Effectiveness

The evidence of the effectiveness of CDSS is mixed. A 2014 systematic review did not find a benefit in terms of risk of death when the CDSS was combined with the electronic health record. There may be some benefits, however, in terms of other outcomes.

A 2005 systematic review concluded that CDSSs improved practitioner performance in 64% of the studies. The CDSSs improved patient outcomes in 13% of the studies. Sustainable CDSSs features associated with improved practitioner performance include the following:

Decision

Decision may refer to:

Law and politics

Books

Sports

Film and TV

Music

Albums

Support

Support may refer to:

Psychology

Finance

Chemistry and materials science

Mathematics

Military

See also

System

A system is a set of interacting or interdependent component parts forming a complex/intricate whole. Every system is delineated by its spatial and temporal boundaries, surrounded and influenced by its environment, described by its structure and purpose and expressed in its functioning.

The term system may also refer to a set of rules that governs structure and/or behavior. Alternatively, and usually in the context of complex social systems, the term is used to describe the set of rules that govern structure and/or behavior.

Etymology

The term "system" comes from the Latin word systēma, in turn from Greek σύστημα systēma: "whole compounded of several parts or members, system", literary "composition".

History

According to Marshall McLuhan,

"System" means "something to look at". You must have a very high visual gradient to have systematization. In philosophy, before Descartes, there was no "system". Plato had no "system". Aristotle had no "system".

In the 19th century the French physicist Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot, who studied thermodynamics, pioneered the development of the concept of a "system" in the natural sciences. In 1824 he studied the system which he called the working substance (typically a body of water vapor) in steam engines, in regards to the system's ability to do work when heat is applied to it. The working substance could be put in contact with either a boiler, a cold reservoir (a stream of cold water), or a piston (to which the working body could do work by pushing on it). In 1850, the German physicist Rudolf Clausius generalized this picture to include the concept of the surroundings and began to use the term "working body" when referring to the system.