CDS Hooks
Clinical Decision Support (CDS) Hooks is a Health Level Seven International® (HL7®) specification managed by the HL7 Clinical Decision Support (CDS) Workgroup providing a way to embed additional, near real-time functionality within a clinician’s workflow of an electronic health record. A specified event(s) within the clinician’s workflow triggers the CDS service, which gathers the appropriate specified data elements through secure Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources® (FHIR®) services. By utilizing FHIR services, CDS Hooks provides interoperability between multiple stakeholders operating on different platforms.
The FHIR service app can return appropriate guidance, such as proposed alternative medication or formulary information. CDS Service vendors can test CDS Service functionality using the CDS Hooks Sandbox. More advanced functionality is under development, such as the multi-interested party Da Vinci Burden Reduction Project and provides use cases for alerts/notifications, prior authorization, and document exchange. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's CDS Connect Project provides a web-based platform to assist with development of CDS artifacts and CDS Hooks.