We describe a quality improvement study to understand clinicians’ perspectives on using a clinical decision support tool (CDS) for clinical diagnosis and education (VisualDx™) across an integrated healthcare system. Surveys, interviews, and secondary data were analyzed to understand the patterns of usage, associated barriers, facilitators, and suggestions influencing the CDS’s adoption and usability. Overall, the CDS had multidimensional functionality, and outpatient primary care had the highest adoption. Key benefits included assistance in building differential diagnoses, mainly of ‘dermatological conditions’, which could be used for patients, students, and clinician self-education. Barriers impacting use were retrospectively mapped to the RE-AIM implementation science framework (e.g., “Reach” or tool-related limited awareness; “Adoption “or access challenges; and “Implementation”, and “Maintenance” or sub-optimal training). Incorporating end-user (i.e., clinician) perspectives around factors influencing adoption and use of CDS, under a specific context, could lead to a wider and more successful use.
Thatipelli et al. (Thu,) studied this question.