The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) is committed to promoting the advancement of CDS. Over the course of several years, ONC has facilitated a variety of activities to catalyze progress in CDS development and deployment in support of enhanced health and care.

Some noteworthy activities include:

• The award of an “Advancing CDS” contract to accelerate the successful implementation and effective use of CDS interventions. The project is designed to:
  • Advance the widespread dissemination of successful CDS implementation practices to promote broad CDS adoption
  • Improve the acceptance and usability of medication CDS systems through the development of a clinically important drug-drug interaction list
  • Advance the practical sharing of effective CDS interventions across care settings
  • Identify CDS-related gaps and goals specific to a broad range of clinical specialties
     
• A two-day Clinical Decision Support (CDS) Workshop [PDF - 513 KB], sponsored by ONC, which brought together a large group of subject matter experts who shared their thoughts on a series of topics related to advancing the utility, usability, and meaningful use of CDS.  Attendees represented a broad spectrum of expertise, including clinical informatics, quality improvement, patient advocacy, provider, payor, knowledge vendor, and electronic health records (EHR) system vendor perspectives. 
   
• The creation of CDS recommendations [PDF - 50 KB] across five American Health Information Community (AHIC) workgroups, which focused on:
  • Improving health care quality through the effective use of CDS
  • Facilitating collaboration across CDS initiatives
  • Accelerating CDS development and adoption through federal government programs and collaborations
     
• The development of a Roadmap for National Action on Clinical Decision Support [PDF - 1.32 MB] , which recommends a series of activities to improve CDS development, implementation and use throughout the United States. The roadmap, crafted in 2006, identified three critical pillars for fully realizing the promise of CDS:
  • Making the best available clinical knowledge well-organized for CDS interventions
  • Promoting the high adoption and effective use of CDS tools
  • Continuously improving knowledge and CDS methods
     
• The Inventory of Federal Clinical Decision Support Activities, which is a compilation of project summaries, describing CDS activities that are either funded by the US Federal government, or that are being executed by agencies of the government.
   
• The CDS Federal Collaboratory, which is a federal community of interest, was formed in 2008 to focus on CDS as a key health information technology component for improving the quality, safety, efficiency and effectiveness of health care.