Clinical Decision Support (CDS) refers broadly to providing clinicians or patients with clinical knowledge and patient-related information, intelligently filtered or presented at appropriate times, to enhance patient care. Clinical knowledge of interest could range from simple facts and relationships to best practices for managing patients with specific disease states, new medical knowledge from clinical research and other types of information.
CDS goals and objectives are the target healthcare processes and outcomes that CDS efforts are intended to achieve. Goals are high-level or strategic targets such as increasing patient safety; objectives are more specific, tactical targets, such as increasing the use of specific life-saving medications in appropriate circumstances.