Computerized decision support systems for multimorbidity care - an urgent call for research and development

Healthcare organisations and General Practitioners (GPs) in particular, are overwhelmed by the growing number of patients with multiple chronic diseases (i.e. multimorbid) and the additional complexity involved in their associated treatments. There is evidence to suggest that Computerized Decision Support Systems (CDSS) offer many potential benefits to support multimorbidity care, but this remains under investigated. For example CDSS have been shown to improve the quality/safety of medication prescribing; to increase clinician adherence to guideline/protocol based care; as well as to enhance communication and decision making among providers and patients. This chapter draws on extant literature to discuss these and other potential benefits of CDSS for enhancing multiborbidity care and calls for further research and development in this area. The chapter also identifies the required features of such software systems and underlines a number of key challenges that must be overcome for the successful deployment of CDSS in this context