• Topic Highlight: Advancing PC CDS Standards
• Lessons Learned from AHRQ CDSiC Work on AI-Supported PC CDS
• AHRQ CDSiC Work Presented at MCBK North America Chapter Meeting

Health information technology (health IT) standards are agreed-upon rules and guidelines that support the electronic exchange of data between different systems.  Standards are essential to promoting interoperability, or the ability of systems to work together.  Consistent standards help ensure that PC CDS tools incorporate the latest knowledge, are accessible wherever clinicians and patients want to receive them, and easy to understand and use for decision making.

Since standards are foundational to the adoption and implementation of PC CDS tools, the AHRQ CDSiC has long prioritized work in this critical area, developing several reports, resources, and tools to support the creation of standards-based PC CDS.  These include:

• A comprehensive environmental scan that shares the current landscape of standards, federal initiatives, and regulatory frameworks for PC CDS
   
• A two-page factsheet that summarizes key findings from the full environmental scan
   
• A report that identifies opportunities for facilitating interoperability of patient apps with electronic health records and other health IT systems through adoption and use of standards
   
• A resource that explores the standardization of patient preference information to enhance its use in PC CDS tools 

Click here to access all of the AHRQ CDSiC's resources on this key topic!

The use of AI in healthcare presents a key opportunity to improve care delivery and strengthen clinical decision making.  In response, the AHRQ CDSiC has explored AI's potential to enhance PC CDS and enable these valuable tools to reach more people.

The latest Leadership Viewpoint piece describes this recent work, which includes reports that explore patient perspectives on AI in PC CDS and how AI is being used to scale PC CDS, as well as two pilot projects that implemented AI-supported PC CDS tools in clinical settings.  The Viewpoint also highlights four themes that emerged from these efforts, which have important implications for the use of AI-supported PC CDS:

• Promoting patient trust, transparency, and explainability in AI-supported PC CDS
   
• Understanding how to scale AI-supported PC CDS
   
• Keeping humans in the loop
   
• Testing AI-supported PC CDS in the real world

Read more about this innovative work in the full Viewpoint!

MCBK is an international community from academia, the sciences, and government working together to ensure that biomedical knowledge in computable form is findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable.  The group’s most recent event, the MCBK North America Chapter Meeting, took place on February 27-28, 2025. 

Four AHRQ CDSiC resources were presented at the meeting's virtual poster session:

• Capturing Patient Preferences for PC CDS Within Patient Lifeflows and Clinical Workflows
   
• Exploring Challenges and Opportunities for Implementing and Scaling PC CDS: Case Studies of AHRQ CDS Projects
   
• Action Plan to Collect and Use Social Determinants of Health Data in PC CDS
   
• Planning and Reporting Tool for PC CDS Implementations

Find out more about the meeting on MCBK's website.