FAQ

What is EBMEDS?

Recommendations based on the Evidence Summaries have been further developed into a clinical decision support tool – Evidence Based Medicine electronic Decision Support (EBMEDS). It can be described as a set of rules (scripts) applied to structured health data.

How does the EBMEDS work?

The Evidence-Based Medicine electronic Decision Support (EBMEDS) system brings evidence into practice by means of context-sensitive guidance at the point of care. EBMEDS receives structured patient data from electronic health records (EHRs) and returns reminders, therapeutic suggestions and diagnosis-specific links to guidelines. It can also be used to channel patient data to electronic forms and calculators.

How many rules (scripts) are there?

There are over 2000 scripts, of which over 600 are in active use (1/2019). The total number of individual recommendations is close to 50,000. See our up-to-date statistics for more info.

Can EBMEDS be integrated with patient records?

The EBMEDS module can be integrated into any electronic health record system (EHR) capable of providing structured and coded data.

How the integration of EHR and EBMEDS is done?

The EHR sends patient data as an XML message to the EBMEDS module. The module analyzes the data package and returns an XML message containing the decision support information. The EHR vendor designs the user interface, in which the decision support information is shown in the EHR workstation. The response message may also be delivered as pre-formatted HTML instead of XML.

Can I modify decision support rules?

Decision support rules can be created and edited with a web-based editor, which is available for all end users. The rules can be global or specific to a region or an organization.

What precisely are EBMEDS outcomes?

EBMEDS notices are categorized in three levels according to importance: Alerts, Prompts and Reminders

How do alerts, prompts and reminders differ?

Alerts address situations, when ignoring the recommended action might cause serious harm to the patient. Prompts address situations, when the recommended action has considerable benefits for patient-important outcomes. Reminders address situations, when there is a clear evidence of benefit, but the magnitude of benefit is not large in all patients.